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 2025.
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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 2025.
We are delighted to announce that Cynan Jones will be guest judge for the 2025 competition
Cynan Jones is from near Aberaeron, on the west coast of Wales. His acclaimed fiction, which includes five novels and numerous short stories, has appeared in over 20 countries, and in journals and magazines including Granta, Freeman’s and the New Yorker. He also writes for screen, has written a collection of tales for children, and a number of stories for BBC Radio, including the twelve-story collection Stillicide. He has been longlisted and shortlisted for numerous awards, and won, among other prizes, the Wales Book of the Year Fiction Prize, a Jerwood Fiction Uncovered Award, and the BBC National Short Story Award. His short story collection, Pulse, is forthcoming from Granta Books in November 2025.
Website: www.cynanjones.net
The Rhys Davies Short Story Competition is proud to announce its 2025 shortlist.
Ralph Bolland is an actor, writer, poet and dramaturg, with 30 years’ experience in performing arts: from small-scale touring and theatre-in-education to regional Rep and the West End; from TV and radio to over a decade of community arts engagement. He was runner-up in the inaugural BBC Wales / NTW Drama Prize (2013) and has been published in Red Poets magazine and written Radio Drama for BBC Scotland.
Based in Llandrindod Wells since 2007, Ralph is Artistic Director of Mid Powys Youth Theatre, working to sustain high-quality, professionally-led arts engagement for young people in remote, rural communities.
Facebook: ralph.bolland.9 | X: @MidPowysYT | Instagram: midpowysyt
Born in Swansea and still there, Alan Bryant lives with his lovely wife in Mumbles. He has won the UK National Association of Writers' Groups’ historical short story competition, placed twice in their comedy prize, and had short stories published in numerous anthologies, with one nominated for the Pushcart Prize. His work has also been read on BBC Radio Wales. Many of his stories are based on humanity’s failings, with some bordering on the zany side. He has a BA in Literature and creative writing from the Open University and writes without expecting Hollywood to napalm a path to his door.
Miranda Davies is a writer and academic. She has written many hours of radio drama for Radio 4; two novels (Miss Treadway & the Field of Stars and A Little London Scandal) and a travel memoir. She publishes under the names Miranda Davies and Miranda Emmerson. She comes from a mixture of backgrounds, being at once Welsh, English, French, Polish and Jewish. She grew up in London but has lived in Barry, Vale of Glamorgan, for the past eighteen years. She is currently researching narratives around women’s boxing at the University of South Wales.
Jonathan Edwards lives in Crosskeys, South Wales. His prize-winning poetry collections, My Family and Other Superheroes and Gen, are published by Seren, and his short fiction has appeared in New Welsh Review.
Sybilla Harvey grew up in Abergavenny and later completed an MA in Creative & Life Writing at Goldsmiths, University of London. Now a creative director for a production company in New York, she returns home often. Her short stories have been published in New Welsh Review and Mslexia and recognised in competitions such as the Berlin Writing Prize. She is currently on the shortlist for the 2025 Rheidol Prize for Prose with a Welsh Theme or Setting.
Instagram: @sybilla.harvey
Swansea writer Natalie Ann Holborow's Little Universe has been shortlisted for Wales Book of the Year 2025. She is a winner of the Terry Hetherington Award and the Robin Reeves Prize and has been shortlisted for the Rheidol Welsh Writing Prize and Cursed Murphy Spoken Word Award among others. Her writing residencies with the British Council, Literature Wales and Kultivera have seen her writing and performing poetry in Wales, Ireland, Sweden and India. She is the author of two other poetry collections with Parthian: And Suddenly You Find Yourself and Small. Her first non-fiction book, Wild Running, is out with Seren in 2025.
Website: www.natalieholbow.com | Instagram: @natholborow
Sian Hughes is a writer and creative practitioner working in schools and community settings. Her debut short story collection Pain Sluts was shortlisted for Wales Book of the Year 2022, whilst previous stories have appeared in Storgy, Fiction Pool, Fiction Desk and Scribble. Three of her stories have been adapted for the screen and broadcast on BBC Wales and S4C, with a recent adaptation of her story ‘Consumed’ winning Best Short Film at the Reykjavik and London BELIFE Short Film Festivals. Sian is currently working on a second collection, Doll Skin, and lives in Cardiff with her family.
Website: www.sianhughes.me.uk | Facebook: sianelisabethhughes | X: @FlossingtheCat | Instagram: @flossingthecat
Kate Lockwood Jefford grew up in Cardiff, worked as an NHS psychiatrist in London, and completed an MA in Creative Writing at Birkbeck. Her short fiction was awarded the VS Pritchett Prize (2020), 1st prizes in Bath (2021) and Brick Lane Bookshop (2023) Short Story Awards, and features in many anthologies including Take a Bite: The Rhys Davies Short Story Award Anthology (Parthian, 2021), Aesthetica (2021, 2022), and 22 FICTIONS: New Writing from Desperate Literature & Brick Lane Bookshop (Cheerio, 2025). Kate divides her time between London, Cardiff and Brecon, and is working on a novel inspired by the sensory and biographical landscape of South Wales.
X: @kljefford | Instagram: @grandbunyan
Keza O’Neill grew up in Aberystwyth, where a love of stories took hold early – shaped by the people, the place, and a culture that values a good tale. She studied French in Sheffield and spent a decade hopping between London, Paris, and San Francisco, working in tech (but not the technical bit). Somewhere between airport lounges, luggage carousels, and client calls across 40+ countries, she rediscovered storytelling.
Her fiction explores the tangled threads between people and place, circling the idea of home. ‘Sunny Side’ was shortlisted for the Rhys Davies Short Story Award 2024; ‘Lucky Strike’ won the Sansom Award and placed third in the Bristol Short Story Prize 2023. Her work has also been longlisted for Mslexia, Bath, the CWA Debut Dagger, and Lucy Cavendish prizes.
She lives in Bristol—because home is just across the bridge.
Instagram: @kezawrites | Bluesky: @kezawrites.bsky.social | Substack: @kezawrites
Jonathan Page lives and works in the Black Mountains, near Talgarth. Several of his short stories have been anthologised in recent years, and he was shortlisted for the Rhys Davies Prize in 2022. His novel, Blue Woman, the fictional life story of a Welsh painter, was published by Weatherglass Books in 2022.
Tess Powell is a writer and artist from California who moved to Swansea, Wales to complete her master's in creative writing and continue her study of the Welsh language. She is new to her prose writing journey and until now has mostly worked in Illustration. In October Tess has a bilingual English/Welsh comic being released with the international Shortbox Comic Fair under the pen name 'Fortune’s Fool'. She is always finding inspiration from the people she meets and places around her and has a penchant for writing about women at their wits' end.
Instagram: @tessofthepowell
How to enter
Open for entries: THURSDAY 28th NOVEMBER 2024
Deadline for receipt of entries: FRIDAY 14th FEBRUARY 2025 AT MIDNIGHT
How to enter:
- Read the Entry Rules, Terms and Conditions - 2025 Rhys Davies Short Story Competition
- Pay the entry fee and receive your unique reference number CLICK HERE. For details of eligibility for free entry, please consult the terms and conditions
- Please complete the entry form CLICK HERE.
