Announcing the winners of the 2016 Newcomer Prize

It’s time to reveal the winners and shortlist of the 2016 Fiction Desk Newcomer Prize.

This year, there’s a shortlist of twelve stories, including the two winners. All shortlisted writers will receive a year’s subscription to our anthology series, and there’s £500 for the first place, and £250 for the second. Let’s start with the shortlist:

• Positional Asphyxia by Lucy Apps
• The History Lesson by Kate van der Borgh
• Gardening Leave by Dan Brotzel
• Stay by David Frankel
• An Internship by Todd Van Horn
• The Song of Stephen by Frances Knight
• Watching a Girl You Might Have Loved Get Dressed to Work the Bars by Elias Lindert
• Two Pounds, Six Ounces by Hannah Mathewson
• Renaissance Man by James Mitchell
• Memento Mori by Richard Newton
• Splitting Miles by Claire Parkin
• Slice by Imogen West-Knights

And the winners are:

• In first place: Renaissance Man by James Mitchell
• In second place: Splitting Miles by Claire Parkin

Congratulations to all of the above winners, and thank you again to everybody who took part in the competition. I’ll be contacting the winners and shortlistees over the next two weeks to arrange prizes, and the two winning stories will appear in the next Fiction Desk anthology.

The Newcomer Prize will open again for entries towards the end of the year. Our annual ghost story competition is open now, and you’ll find more details of that one here.