This book will be released in October 2025.
Pre-orders are charged at time of order and the book will be posted to you as soon as it becomes available.
UK postage is 99 pence per order.
FREE POSTAGE IN THE UK WITH THIS DISCOUNT CODE: RDSSAFREEPOSTAGE
EDITED BY ELAINE CANNING
JUDGED AND WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY CYNAN JONES
'These are stand-out examples of how impactful a short story can be.' – Cynan Jones
Twelve compelling, original stories about friendship, family, fragility and love from the winners of the 2025 Rhys Davies Short Story Award.
An unnamed man travels towards Aberystwyth after twenty years, wrestling with his own internal thought processes punctuated by childhood memories; a young woman adopts a fern baby while another befriends a giant African land snail; a group of men and one woman gather at Friday club to hear Eirwyn’s wolf story; and a class of boys find themselves with their recently engaged teacher in Craig y Ddinas for a climbing expedition. A small unspoilt island is infiltrated by a ketchup-obsessed business man promising tourism income; and unemployed thirty-year-old Bonita challenges her neighbourhood’s fixation with lemon trees.
These are stories which transport the reader across place and time, illuminating environmental challenges, our relationship with the natural world and the impact of new, unexpected worlds.
The Rhys Davies Short Story Competition recognises the very best unpublished short stories in English in any style by writers aged 18 or over who were born in Wales, have lived in Wales for two years or more, or are currently living in Wales. Originally established in 1991, Parthian is delighted to publish the 2025 winning stories on behalf of the Rhys Davies Trust and in association with Swansea University’s Cultural Institute.
Previous winners of the prize have included Leonora Brito, Tristan Hughes, Kate Hamer, Laura Morris, Matthew G. Rees and Tanya Pengelly.
Authors in this anthology: Ralph Bolland; Alan Bryant; Miranda Davies; Jonathan Edwards; Sybilla Harvey; Natalie Ann Holborow; Sian Hughes; Kate Lockwood Jefford; Keza O'Neill; Jonathan Page; and Tess Powell.
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.
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 was on the shortlist for the 2025 Rheidol Prize for Prose with a Welsh Theme or Setting.
Swansea writer Natalie Ann Holborow's Little Universe was 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.
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.
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.
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.
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. Tess has a bilingual English/Welsh comic 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.
Cynan Jones is from Aberaeron, on the west coast of Wales. His acclaimed fiction, which includes five novels and numerous short stories, has appeared in over twenty countries, and in journals and magazines including Granta, Freeman’s and the New Yorker. His short story collection, Pulse, is forthcoming from Granta Books in November 2025. www.cynanjones.net (photo credit: Bernadine Jones)
Originally from Belfast, Elaine Canning is a literary prize and festival director, writer, and editor. Her debut novel, The Sandstone City, was published in 2022. www.elainecanning.co.uk