Newcastle Short Story Award 2020

2020 Newcastle Short Story Award Winner: Bird Swing by Ursula Robinson-Shaw From the judges:  We had an excellent time reading and judging the 2020 Newcastle Short Story Award. The ones that stood out had energy, originality, and charm. The authors propelled us through with authentic dialogue, unusual turns in the plot, something simple done well, confidence, and polish.  Our winner, Bird Swing, is an outstanding story about a woman working for little money deep in the beauty product world, who finds herself in a bit of a pickle. Bird Swing  is clever, funny, inventive, with sharp sentences and an accomplished, confident narrative voice. Second place goes to 'Clearing the Air', the sort of story that is difficult to get right: in a very short space of time and a very limited setting, the reader gleans a whole world and its credible characters. And congratulations to the author of 'The Romantics', which wins third place, for telling an elegant and charming story with a fabulous voice and for giving the reader a layer of metaphor that serves the story perfectly. Laura Elvery and Khalid Warsame