Hannah Webb wins V.S. Pritchett Short Story Prize 2026
The author was awarded the trophy and a £1,000 prize at last night’s ALCS Annual Awards for her “sharp-witted, hugely accomplished and taut” short story 'Bottom’s Dream’.
The prize is for unpublished short stories between 2,000 and 4,000 words in length. As well as the trophy and cash prize, ‘Bottom’s Dream’ will also be published in the Royal Society of Literature’s Review.
On winning the prize, Hannah said:
“Wow, I’m really shocked and delighted. I really loved writing this story and it had quite a few iterations before it became what it is now. It feels really special to have it recognised like this. Writing can be a funny thing, I spent a lot of time in my pyjamas hunched over my laptop. So it’s very nice to know at least some of that damage to my posture has been worth it!”
Her story was chosen by this year’s judges Tishani Doshi, Kirsty Gunn, and Tom Vowler from a shortlist of six other inventive and highly original stories.
Judge Kirsty Gunn described the winning story as:
“A short story that jumps with experimentation and elan. A flight of dream, fragmentary thinking, elegy, text message and theatre… This is writing that reimagines how a short story might be read, with an openness to new approaches and outcomes that defies the somewhat hardened format of beginning-middle-and end that still threatens to stifle the genre. Here instead is an approach to the form that takes risks.”
The V.S. Pritchett Short Story Prize was founded by the Royal Society of Literature in 1999 to commemorate the centenary of an author widely regarded as one of the finest English short story writers of the 20th century.
You can learn more about the V.S. Pritchett Short Story Prize here.
