International Literary Prize 2025 Winners
We are delighted to announce the shortlisted short story and poetry entries for the 2025 International Literary Prize.
Winners and Highly Commended will be announced in December. Judges' Choices and Editors' International Choices will be announced in January.
Prizes will be awarded at the International Literary Festival in February 2026. The festival will also see the publication of the anthologies and the launch of the 2026 International Literary Prize.
Shortlisted Stories and extracts from winning scripts will be published in the 2026 Short Story anthology. Shorlisted Poems, winning song lyrics and links to performed songs will be published in the 2026 Poetry anthology.
Short Stories
1st Place
2nd place
3rd place
Highly Commended
SHORTLIST
A Partner Always Knows
After Jack
At home with the Millers
At the Sea Edge
Bearing Time
BRICK
Broken Angels
Catching Trout On A Thursday
Count the Days
Couple's Complete Guide to Racquetball and Yoga
Death Rattle
Death's favourite shortbread
Gifted
In Pieces
In The Dark
Left At The End
Leporidae
My Own Personal Jesus
Need For Meat
Night Tennis
Of Flesh and Bone
On Hawthorn Crag
Polystyrene: A Love Story
pornography
Rayesh
Reel
Resurrection Fern
Secrets of the Hidden Port
Skeleton Water
Sleeping Beauty
Somewhere in England
Somewhere in England
String Theory
Thaw
The Clocks That Worked
The Corpse Seeker's Picnic
The Doorstep Maulings
The Evening Run.
The Great History Extinction Act of 2020
The Other Kind of Woman
The Painter’s Palimpsest
The Postcard
The Severed
Poetry
1st Place
2nd place
3rd place
Highly Commended
Shortlist
A Play within a Play
Acquiescence
Affair
All the Things I Keep from You.
Bury it deep inside
Canal Visit
Domestic
Don't You Dare
Drawing from the Bones
Festival of Lights
File Not Found
for Keepers of Books
Inverse Functions
Memory Stick
Mother's Day
Nausicaa and the storytelling animal
Not here, not yet
On Hearing the Last Bee of Summer
Origin Story
Quintessence
Red Giant (v.2)
Riding T1
She paid
Still Life
The Beach
The Blue Room
The Box (Please Don’t Read This Poem)
The Friday Evening Poets’ Society
The Other Side of Me
The Secret Photo
Time
Transatlantic
Trenovissick (1955)
Troy Town
Waste ground
You Weren't Meant To Know
Scriptwriting
1st Place
2nd place
3rd place
Highly Commended
Shortlist
Songwriting
Song Lyrics
1st Place
2nd place
3rd place
Highly Commended
Performed Song
1st Place
2nd place
3rd place
Highly Commended
S
Be inspired
Listen to the theme song and read winning entries from previous years.
