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Novelist and short story writer Caoilinn Hughes has been shortlisted for the 2025 ÃÛÑ¿´«Ã½ National Short Story Award for Two Hands, a ‘funny’ and ‘accomplished’ story, inspired by the author’s experience of a camper van crash on a Spanish motorway with her partner. The story, written to create a new set of associations around this difficult experience, follows a couple as they take a driving lesson with an elderly instructor in a quest to regain confidence after a car accident in Italy. Their move back to Ireland has skewed the dynamics of their relationship, and the story artfully explores the complexities and tensions within a marriage, with humour and poignancy.

Caoilinn Hughes is an award-winning author and short story writer from Ireland. Her novels include The Wild Laughter (2020) which won the RSL’s Encore Award and most recently, The Alternatives (2024.) Her short stories have won the Irish Book Awards' Story of the Year, The Moth Short Story Prize, and an O. Henry Prize. She was recently Oscar Wilde Writer Fellow at Trinity College Dublin and a Cullman Center Fellow at New York Public Library. Caoilinn Hughes grew up in Galway and now lives in London.

The 2025 ÃÛÑ¿´«Ã½ National Short Story Award with Cambridge University (ÃÛÑ¿´«Ã½ NSSA) shortlist was announced on Thursday 11 September 2025 live on ÃÛÑ¿´«Ã½ Radio 4’s Front Row, as the prestigious award celebrates its 20th anniversary. The shortlist, featuring multi-award winning writers and ‘astonishing’ new talent, was praised for its ‘intimate,’ ‘elegant’ and ’nuanced’ explorations of relationships, community and the specificities of place set against a world in crisis.

Selected by a panel of previous winners and returning judges from across the Award’s 20-year history, the five-strong shortlist are: Costa Book of the Year 2011 and Booker Prize 2025 longlisted author Andrew Miller; multi-award winning Irish writer Caoilinn Hughes, Desmond Elliott Prize winning novelist and short story specialist Edward Hogan; and new names, British-Lebanese author Emily Abdeni-Holman, and Colwill Brown whose debut novel was published this year.

Set in locations from Derbyshire and Doncaster to Jerusalem and County Kildare, the stories explore ‘self-contained’ worlds often inspired by personal memories and experiences, from the complexities of marriage, to the mysteries of survival in crisis; from newly formed inter-generational bonds, to the quiet tension between people and place, each reveals the short story’s ‘unparalleled’ power to reflect ‘the times we are living through.’

For two decades this award has celebrated writers who are the UK’s finest exponents of the form.  James Lasdun secured the inaugural Award in 2006 for ‘An Anxious Man’. In 2012 when the Award expanded internationally for one year, Miroslav Penkov was victorious for his story, ‘East of the West’. Last year, the Award was won by Ross Raisin for ‘Ghost Kitchen’, a tense, cinematic story narrated by a bicycle courier and inspired by the gig economy and the ‘dark kitchens’ of the restaurant industry.

In its 20-year history, Sarah Hall, K J Orr, Naomi Wood, Jonathan Buckley, Julian Gough, Clare Wigfall, Cynan Jones, Lucy Caldwell, Ingrid Persaud, Saba Sams and David Constantine have also carried off the Award with shortlisted authors including Zadie Smith, Jackie Kay, William Trevor, Rose Tremain, Caleb Azumah Nelson, Naomi Alderman, Kamila Shamsie, K Patrick and Jacqueline Crooks.

This year’s judging panel was chaired by Di Speirs who has sat on every judging panel since the Award’s inception and is joined by the very first chair of judges, William Boyd as well as former winners and shortlisted writers Lucy Caldwell, Ross Raisin and Kamila Shamsie.

In a time when literary awards come and go, and can struggle for funding and airtime, the ÃÛÑ¿´«Ã½ National Short Story Award with Cambridge University continues to be a cause for joy

From 15th to 18th September four of the shortlisted stories can be heard at 3.30 each afternoon with the fifth story in contention for the award broadcasting on Friday, 19th September, at 11.30pm. The winner of the 20th ÃÛÑ¿´«Ã½ National Short Story Award will be announced live on ÃÛÑ¿´«Ã½ Radio 4’s Front Row on Tuesday 30th September 2025.

Produced by Michael Shannon

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