Wood named winner of the £15k BBC Short Story Award for 'sparkling' sex-tape story

Author and UEA Creative Writing lecturer Naomi Wood has won the 18th BBC National Short Story Award with Cambridge University with “Comorbidities”, which explores maintaining love and intimacy in a marriage.  

Wood was presented with the £15,000 prize on Tuesday evening (26th September) by the chair of judges Reeta Chakrabarti at a ceremony held at BBC Broadcasting House in London and broadcast live on BBC Radio 4’s “Front Row”.

“Comorbidities” is taken from Woods’ forthcoming debut collection, This is Why We Can’t Have Nice Things (Orion, June 2024) and is narrated on BBC Sounds by actress Charlotte Ritchie, known for her appearances in shows such as "You", "Call The Midwife" and "Fresh Meat".

Praised by judges for its “contemporaneity and humour”, the story follows a married couple, Mackenzie and Mason, exhausted by the reality of parenting their young children, six-year-old Aida and one-year-old Casper.

Organisers of the prize said: “With a rare 24 hours alone with Aida and Casper at their Granny Cherry’s, and desperate to reintroduce some intimacy and passion into their relationship, the couple decide to make a sex tape.”

The judges praised Wood’s “light and refreshing” and “seriously funny” storytelling, which considers modern parenting, privacy intrusion, teenage mental health and the physical demands of motherhood. Wood is based in Norwich, England, where she teaches Creative Writing at UEA and is the bestselling author of three novels, The Godless Boys (2011), Mrs Hemingway (2014) and The Hiding Game (2019, all published by Pan Macmillan). Her debut short story collection, This is Why We Can’t Have Nice Things, will be published by Orion in 2024.

Her stories have been published in numerous outlets and shortlisted for the Desperate Literature Prize, the Manchester Fiction Prize, the London Magazine Prize and longlisted for the Galley Beggar Press Prize.

Wood said: “As the best and most prestigious award for the short story in the country, of course it means a huge amount for my story to be recognised for the first time in this way.

"I love writing short stories, but it has taken me three novels and over a decade to get there. Only now do I feel like I understand them. I started writing this story three years ago, when my kids were one and five, which is a crucially exhausting time for parents when you don’t have any time for yourself, or your relationship, and the only vibrato that buzzes through everyday life is just this constant hum of sleeplessness."

She added: "I guess the main thrust of ‘Comorbidities’ is how to maintain intimacy and love when you’re assailed with caring responsibilities, work, family – this supermassive cluster of 21st-century anxieties and tensions.”

Chakrabarti described the story as “a sparkling gem, written with a light and wry touch, but which tackles serious themes”. She added: “It stood out because it felt bang up-to-date and contemporary. Each character is beautifully defined, and the panel felt this was a story with many points of contact for the reader."

Di Speirs, editor of books at BBC Audio and judge of the award, said: “In a strong shortlist, Naomi Wood’s story stood out for its complexity and its ambition. We all admired its deft handling of contemporary anxieties, its robust honesty and, very happily, its humour. A funny story remains a rare thing."

Wood beat an international shortlist including South African poetry press publisher Nick Mulgrew for “The Storm”, Pakistani-British and Women’s Prize-winning novelist Kamila Shamsie for "Churail”, 2023 Granta Best Young British Novelist K Patrick for “It’s Me” and Australian novelist and short story writer Cherise Saywell for “Guests”.

The judging panel chair, broadcaster Chakrabarti, was joined by bestselling novelist Jessie Burton; Booker Prize winning Irish writer Roddy Doyle; award-winning author and lecturer Okechukwu Nzelu as well as Spiers.

The BBC National Short Story Award is one of the most prestigious for a single short story, with the winning author receiving £15,000, and the shortlisted authors £600 each.  

Each of the five shortlisted stories are available to listen to on BBC Sounds and are also published in an anthology BBC National Short Story Award 2023, introduced by Chakrabarti and published by Comma Press.

Cambridge University academic Dr Bonnie Lander Johnson said: “Naomi’s story will speak to many readers. It demonstrates the genre’s capacity to be at once sharply relevant to our social moment, and deeply personal.”

Additionally, Atlas Weyland Eden, 18, was named the winner of the ninth annual BBC Young Writers’ Award with Cambridge University, for “The Wordsmith”. A collaboration between BBC Radio 4 and Radio 1 and open to all 14 to 18-year-olds and the five-strong shortlist was revealed earlier this month. It is also available to listen to on BBC Sounds.

The 2022 winner of the BBC National Short Story Award was Saba Sams for "Blue 4eva".