Huge congratulations to the winners and highly commended stories from our 2025 International Story Award. The bios and photos of all the authors are below and you can read the comments of our judges, Lucy Luck, Liv Bignold and the senior BSSA team in their report. The stories will be published in paperback in our 2025 BSSA Anthology, out later this year.
Cleo Heywood
First Prize: Dancer All Legs Up by Cleo Heywood Cleo is a writer based in London, currently studying for an MSt in Creative Writing at the University of Oxford. Her work explores dreams, monsters and other worlds, often using speculative and surrealist forms to explore the historical mistreatment and misrepresentation of women. She is primarily a playwright, and this is her first short story – and her first prose publication. Cleo graduated with a First Class BA (Hons) in Writing for Performance from the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama in 2024. Cleo’s poetry has appeared in The Weasel, is forthcoming in Oxford’s The ISIS Magazine, and has appeared in exhibition for TEXTUS network’s ‘HOUSE OF HABERDASH’. Her stage plays have been performed at venues including the Science Museum, the University of Sussex, and Soho Theatre Downstairs.
Jay McKenzie
Second Prize: Danger Zone by Jay McKenzie
Jay McKenzie’s work appears in adda, Maudlin House, The Hooghly Review, Fahmidan Journal, Fictive Dream and others. She recently won the Fish Short Story Prize, was runner up in the inaugural Tom Grass Literary Prize, and has been shortlisted for prizes such as the Commonwealth Short Story Prize and others. Her novel How to Lose the Lottery will be published by Harper Fiction Spring 2026.
Zuzu Cole
Third Prize: Blue Silk Sheets by Zuzu Cole
Zuzu Cole is a writer from Bath, currently studying English with Film at King’s College London. She enjoys writing dryly humorous, voice-driven short stories often centring on themes of femininity, desire, and complex relationships. When she’s not writing, she finds inspiration in cinema visits, walks in nature and making her way through the towering stack of books on her living room floor.
Steve Mellen
The Acorn Prize (for an unpublished writer of fiction), The Dance of the Fire, by Steve Mellen
Steve is a journalist currently working for the BBC, who writes stories in his spare time as – in his words – ‘I was useless at school, except for lessons which involved storytelling.’ His main work in progress is a novel called Ask The Ghosts, which earlier this summer won the Oxford/42 New Writing Prize. ‘The Dance of the Fire’ was born out of watching a documentary called Black Saturday about wildfires that tore through the countryside surrounding Melbourne in February 2009, killing 175 people.
Joanna Campbell
Local Prize: The Song of The Salmon by Joanna Campbell
Joanna’s two published novels are Tying Down the Lion and Instructions for the Working Day, which was shortlisted for the Rubery International Book Award and for The Independent’s Book of the Month.
Her short story collection, When Planets Slip Their Tracks, was shortlisted for the Rubery International Book Award and longlisted for the Edge Hill University Prize. Her first published novella-in-flash, A Safer Way to Fall, was runner-up in the inaugural Bath Flash Fiction Award and her second, Sybilla, won the National Flash Fiction Day Award. Her short stories are published in numerous anthologies, have won first prize in the Exeter Writers competition, London Short Story Prize, Magic Oxygen Literary Prize, Retreat West Short Story Prize, and were shortlisted twice for the Bristol Prize. Her flash fiction came second in the 2017 Bridport Prize, for which her short stories have been shortlisted many times.
Ray Cluley
Highly Commended: Gone Fishing by Ray Cluely
Ray Cluley’s fiction has been published in various magazines and anthologies. He has published two short story collections and recently completed a novel for which he hopes to find a home this year. He holds a PhD in Creative Writing and lives in Wales with his partner and two mischievous but adorable cats.
GIovanna Iozzi
Highly Commended: Bad Little Gardens by Giovanna Iozzi
Giovanna Iozzi has a PhD in Creative Writing from Goldsmiths University. A winner of the Pat Kavanagh prize, her stories have been published and listed in various places including The Brick Lane Story Prize, The Bridport Prize, The Bristol Short Story Prize, Ambit Magazine, the Nature Chronicles Prize, The Brighton Prize, Fish Short Memoir Prize, Exeter Writers. Her story ‘Tipping’ is published in 22 Fictions (Cheerio Publishing/Desperate Literature, 2025) introduced by Wendy Erskine & Joanna Walsh. She teaches fiction courses and workshops at Goldsmiths ECW Dept. Website: joiozzi.com. X: @gioiozzi Gio is also a nature campaigner and set up Haringey Tree Protectors @justplanenews