
Short Story Prize
The Dan Hemingway Short Story Prize is an annual competition open to all undergraduates at the University of St Andrews
UNIVERSITY OF ST ANDREWS - SHORT STORY PRIZE
The Dan Hemingway Short Story Prize is an annual competition open to all undergraduates at the University of St Andrews, and each year’s entries are judged by a distinguished panel of professional writers.
The first twelve prize-winning stories were published as a collection in 2004 with a second volume of thirteen stories published in 2017. They cover themes from the innocence of childhood to the pain of death and divorce. Some look back in history, others look forward to unknown futures. Their diverse settings reflect the authors’ origins in Canada, the USA, Ireland, England and Scotland, but one thing in common is that all were written by undergraduates mostly in their early twenties, and a couple were just nineteen.
Winners of the £300 prize have included several students in the School of English, but winning writers have also graduated in Environmental Biology, International Relations, Social Anthropology, History and Politics.
The Winners
2020 - Cancelled due to COVID-19
2019 - Molly Ketcheson
2018 – Sarah Crawford
2017 – Grace Campbell
2016 – Emma Seckel
2015 – Emily Caulton
2014 – Diana Adachukwu Igwegbu
2013 – Marissa Visci
2012 – Siobhan Dooley
2011 – Alyssa Kilzer
2010 – David Brankin
2008 – Lillian Worth
2007 – Ariel Faulkner
2006 – Hanna Robinson
2005 – Margaret Reges
2004 – Lauren Johnson
2003 – Holly V. Culbreath
2002 – Hannah Buckley
2001 – Tara Quinn1999 – Johanna Lane
1998 – Janet P. Foggie
1997 – Joanne Baxter
1996 – Katherine Orr
1995 – Gavin Bushell
1994 – James Warner
1993 – Leah Edmunds
1992 – Hannah Grant
The 2021 judges
John Burnside, Daisy LaFarge, Sue Hemingway
Publications
Doris Lumsden’s Heart-Shaped Bed
"In the history of the competition the stories have been read by novelists, short story writers and poets such as Carl MacDougall, Alice Thompson, Ron Butlin, Kathleen Jamie, and A.L. Kennedy, as well as full-time members of the School of English such as John Burnside, Robert Crawford, Michael Herbert, Susan Sellers and Gill Plain. It's quite a roll-call of expertise in contemporary fiction and contemporary writing in general. They could easily have refused, but it says everything about the Dan Hemingway Short Story Prize that they didn't."
From the foreword by Douglas Dunn - a founding judge