The 2026 competition is now closed.

Thank you to everyone who entered and supported the Frome Festival Short Story Competition. The long and short lists will be posted here as soon as they are available and the winners will be announced at the Prizegiving in July.

If you requested a critique of your story, please note that these are carried out after the competition is judged and you will receive your feedback in late July/August.

Our judge for 2026 is the novelist Claire Fuller, who won the 2021 Costa Novel Award with ‘Unsettled Ground’.

You may read last year’s winning stories by following the clicking on the titles below:

First prize:  James Lowther for ‘Seventy-two’.

Second prize: Daniel George for ‘Giles and the Alien at the Door’.

Third Prize: Janet Jones for ‘Mixed Messages’.

Local first prize: Sally Bramley for ‘Yesterday’s Newspapers’.

Please see the ‘About’ page for details of a competition for young writers in Frome and the surrounding area.