Submissions for the 2025 Brick Lane Bookshop Short Story Prize are open. The deadline for entries is at 5PM on Monday 17th of March 2025.

The competition is funded by Brick Lane Bookshop.The competition is for original short fiction between 1000 and 5000 words. Entrants must be current residents of England, Northern Ireland, Scotland, or Wales.

Stories must be written in English. Stories must be for adults. Entries must be an original, stand-alone work of fiction by the entrant.

First Prize is £1000, Second Prize is £500, Third Prize is £250. The twelve longlisted stories will be published in Brick Lane Bookshop’s New Short Stories 2025 anthology.

There are 50 free spaces available for authors on a low income.

We are keen to encourage quality, so suggest writers to check their stories before submitting using Prowritingaid. They have free and paid versions and are the best writing software we know to help improve grammar, readability and check for repetition, ‘sticky’ sentences and suggest alternatives.