Angela Readman wins 2013 Costa Short Story Award

North East story writer and poet Angela Readman has won the 2013 Costa Short Story Award with her short story, The Keeper of the Jackalopes, the story of a girl, her father, a jackalope, and survival. In a remarkable feat, the writer was shortlisted for last year’s inaugural Costa Short Story Award before going on to win this year’s competition – despite all entries being judged anonymously.

Angela, who won a Northern Promise Award at the 2007 Northern Writers’ Awards, is the second Northern Writers’ Award winner to catch the judges’ attention in as many years after last year’s inaugural award was won by 2003 Northern Writers’ Award winner Avril Joy with her short story Millie and the Bird.

You can watch an interview with Angela at the awards ceremony below.

Angela’s stories have been shortlisted in the Costa Short Story Award (2012), The Asham Award and The Bristol Prize. Her work has been published online and some of her stories have recently appeared in the anthologies Once Upon a Time There was a Traveller (Virago), Root (Iron Press) and Unthology 3 (Unthanks). Her poetry has been a winner of The Essex Poetry Prize, and in 2013 she won The Mslexia Poetry Competition. She is currently working on a short story collection, Don’t Try This at Home, due to be published by & Other Stories in Spring 2015. 

Established last year, the award – run in association with the Costa Book Awards but judged independently of the main five-category system – is unique in that it was judged anonymously ie without the name of the author being known throughout the process. A shortlist of six stories was selected by a panel of judges then made available on the Costa Book Awards website for the public to download and vote for their favourite.