Sunday Times Short Story Award shortlists Lambert and Rooney

The six-strong shortlist for this year’s £30,000 Sunday Times EFG Short Story Award includes British writer and poet Richard Lambert and Irish writer Sally Rooney.

Rooney, whose debut novel Conversations with Friends will be published by Faber in June 2017, has been shortlisted for for “Mr Salary”, while Lambert has made it onto the list for “The Hazel Twig and Olive Tree”.

The shortlist for the world's richest short story prize also includes US writer Kathleen Alcott for “Reputation Management”; Bret Anthony Johnston, for “Half of What Atlee Rouse Knows About Horses”;  Victor Lodato, for “The Tenant” and Celeste Ng for “Every Little Thing”.

This year’s judges are Booker Prize-winning author Anne Enright; broadcaster and author Mark Lawson; Booker-shortlisted author Neel Mukherjee; Orange and Whitbread prize-winning author Rose Tremain; and Andrew Holgate, literary editor of The Sunday Times.

Mukherjee said: “A set of stories, first read blind by the judges, that does everything the best of the form is capable of and more: in their ways with meaning, their emotional charge, their power to move, their seemingly effortless negotiation of the punishing nature of the form, their navigation of time, all of them are little gems.”

The winner will be announced at Stationers’ Hall in London on April 27th. The five runners-up will each receive £1,000.

Readers can read the shortlisted entries, one a day from March 20th, on the prize’s website. An e-book of the shortlist, Six Shorts 2017 will be published on the Sunday 26th March, priced at £1.99.

Last year's prize was won by Britain's Jonathan Tel for "The Human Phonograph".