The Rhys Davies Short Story Competition is a distinguished national writing competition for writers born or living in Wales. Originally established in 1991, we are delighted to manage this prestigious award on behalf of The Rhys Davies Trust and in association with Parthian Books.
About Rhys Davies
Born in Blaenclydach, near Tonypandy in the Rhondda, in 1901, Rhys Davies was among the most dedicated, prolific, and accomplished of Welsh prose-writers in English. With unswerving devotion and scant regard for commercial success, he practised the writer’s craft for some fifty years, in both the short story and the novel form, publishing in his lifetime a substantial body of work on which his literary reputation now firmly rests. He wrote, in all, more than a hundred stories, twenty novels, three novellas, two topographical books about Wales, two plays, and an autobiography.
Awards
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1st Prize - £1,000 sterling and publication in a short story anthology to be published by Parthian Books in 2024.
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11 x Runners-up/Finalist Prizes - £100 each and publication in a short story anthology to be published by Parthian Books in 2024.
We are delighted to announce that Rebecca F. John will be guest judge for the 2024 competition
Rebecca F. John is the author of five books for adults – Clown’s Shoes, The Haunting of Henry Twist, The Empty Greatcoat, Fannie, and Vulcana. She has previously been shortlisted for the Sunday Times EFG Short Story Award, the Costa First Novel Award, and the Wales Book of the Year Award. In 2022, she published her first children’s book, a middle-grade novel called The Shadow Order, with Firefly Press.
Rebecca lives in Swansea with her partner, their sons, and their dogs. She loves walking, the sea, and reading about as many different worlds as possible.
X @Rebecca_Writer | Instagram @rebeccafjohn | www.rebeccafjohn.com
The Rhys Davies Short Story Competition is proud to announce its 2024 shortlist.
Brennig Davies is from the Vale of Glamorgan. He won the inaugural BBC Young Writers Award in 2015, the Crown at the Urdd Eisteddfod 2019, and was previously shortlisted for the Rhys Davies Short Story Competition in 2021. His work has appeared in the London Magazine and Poetry Wales, and has been broadcast on BBC Radio 4. In 2023 he was chosen as one of the Hay Festival’s Writers at Work.
Morgan Davies writes about landscape, place, and nature. He has a master’s degree in creative writing from the University of Edinburgh with Distinction, and a PhD in creative writing from Aberystwyth University for which he was awarded a departmental postgraduate studentship. Morgan has written for New Welsh Review and Nation.Cymru, and his short stories set in rural Wales have been published and performed. His debut novel, The Burning Bracken, was published in 2022 by Victorina Press. He lives in Mid Wales with his wife and children.
X: @MDaviesWriter
Kamand Kojouri is an Assistant Professor of English at the American University in Dubai. She holds a creative writing MA from City, University of London and PhD from Swansea University. Her MA novel was shortlisted for the Peters Fraser + Dunlop award, and she has been featured on the BBC, El País, and The Irish Times. All the royalties from her poetry collections, The Eternal Dance (2018) and God, Does Humanity Exist? (2020), are donated to The Trevor Project and Child Foundation. She also funds tree-planting initiatives in Sub-Saharan Africa, with 2,920 trees planted to date.
X: @KamandKojouri | Instagram: @kamandkojouri | Facebook: @KamandKojouri | LinkedIn: Kamand Kojouri
Dave Lewis is a writer, poet and photographer from Cilfynydd. He read zoology at Cardiff University, taught biology in Kenya and loves to travel. He runs the International Welsh Poetry Competition and the Poetry Book Awards. His epic poem, Roadkill, outlines the class struggle, while his collection, Going Off Grid, warns of the dangers of digital capitalism. His latest release, Algorithm, dips into AI, war, nature, race, love and travel. He has produced a crime thriller trilogy and the highly-acclaimed novel, The Welsh Man. He likes dogs, elephants and real ale.
www.david-lewis.co.uk
Kapu Lewis is a Welsh writer and poet with autism, and is deeply interested in using storytelling to explore mental health and neurodiversity. Kapu started her career as a journalist, interning at Pembrokeshire’s Western Telegraph and the Carmarthen Journal, and later attending the Cardiff School of Journalism. She now consults for TV and film.
Kapu grew up in Carmarthenshire and now splits her time between London and west Wales. Her work has been published by Epoque Press, The Berlin Literary Review, Handwritten & Co., The Mechanics’ Institute Review, Erro Press and The Menteur.
Website: www.kapulewis.com | X: @kapulewis | Instagram: @kapulewis | Threads: @kapulewis | Facebook: Kapu Lewis | TikTok: @kapulewis
Lloyd Lewis is a Welsh writer and translator. Born and raised in Glamorgan, after studying French literature at university he decided to spend a year in the south-west of France. He has thus far failed to return, and currently lives in Bordeaux with his wife and daughters.
Polly Manning grew up in Carmarthenshire and lives in Swansea. She writes short stories about the everyday lives of people in south Wales, and her non-fiction work has appeared in publications including VICE, Planet, the Western Mail, and The Welsh Agenda. In 2022 she was awarded the White Pube Writers’ Grant, and is a soon-to-be graduate of the MA Creative Writing: Prose Fiction programme at the University of East Anglia, where she was the 2023-24 Annabel Abbs Scholar. She is currently working on her first collection of short stories.
X: @polly_manning_ | Instagram: @polly_manning_
Born and bred in Brymbo, a small village near Wrexham in north Wales, Siân Marlow moved to Reading in 2010, where she lives with her husband and son and their two big dogs. A Modern Languages graduate of St David’s University College in Lampeter, specialising in Swedish and German, Siân started her own small translation company as a way of indulging her passion for the written word. She is currently working on a Master’s degree in creative writing at the University of Reading and has just completed her debut novel. Besides her love of books, Siân loves singing and long walks with her dogs.
LinkedIn: Siân Marlow
Keza O’Neill grew up in Aberystwyth. She studied French in Sheffield and Quebec and gained an MA in Creative Writing with Distinction from the Open University. A qualified Coach-Mentor, Keza spent 15 years working in People Operations, supporting clients worldwide. Having lived and worked in six countries, she’s interested in relationships between people and places and the significance of ‘home’ in shaping identity.
Keza’s story ‘Lucky Strike’ won the Sansom Award and placed third in the Bristol Short Story Prize. Longlisted for the Bath Short Story Award, the CWA Debut Dagger and the Lucy Cavendish Fiction Prize, she lives in Bristol because home is just across the bridge.
Instagram: @kezawrites
Tanya Pengelly is a writer based in Warwickshire, originally born and raised in Cardiff. With a deep appreciation for Welsh stories, she served as chair of the board for Beyond the Border Wales' International Storytelling Festival until 2023. Tanya holds a PhD in creative writing and narratology, and specialises in literary speculative fiction, focusing on landscape and psychological realism. Her work has been featured in The Book of Coventry anthology from Comma Press, and she was a finalist in the Driftwood Press Short Story Contest in 2024.
Instagram: @tanyapengelly | Website: www.tanyapengelly.com
Anthony Shapland grew up in the Rhymney Valley. He was part of the Representing Wales cohort in 2022, the same year he was included in Cree: The Rhys Davies Short Story Award Anthology (Parthian). He appears in the anthologies Cymru & I, (Seren / Inclusive Journalism) and (un)common (Lucent Dreaming). He was a Hay Writer at Work in 2023 and his fiction, 'Feathertongue', for Radio Four’s Short Works series will be broadcast in Autumn 2024. His debut novel A Room Above a Shop will be published by Granta in Spring 2025.
X: @AnthonyShapland | Instagram: @anthonyshapland
Photo Credit: Michal Iwanowski
Jo Verity was born in Newport and has lived in London, Cwmbran and Cardiff. She wrote her first short story twenty-five years ago and in 2003, ‘Rapid Eye Movement’ won the Richard & Judy Short Story Competition.
Over the years, Jo's stories have been broadcast on Radio 4, won competitions, including the Western Mail’s short story prize and appeared in anthologies such as ‘The Bus Stop Scheherazade’ (Cinnamon Press). ‘Trespass’ was a runner up in the 2011 Rhys Davies Competition. Alongside short fiction, Jo has published six novels with Honno Press and is currently grappling with the ending of her seventh.
X: @jo_verity