BBC National Short Story Award - Little Green Man by Edward Hogan

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Edward Hogan's tender and humorous story Little Green Man is in contention for the 2025 BBC National Short Story Award. Dorothy Atkinson reads this warm portrait of a heartbroken gardener forced into partnership with a summer temp as they tend to the green spaces of Derby.

Edward Hogan has an MA in creative writing from the University of East Anglia. From Derby, he is the author of five novels include Blackmoor (2008), which won the Desmond Elliot Prize and the highly-acclaimed The Electric (2020). His recent short stories have won the Dinesh Allirajah Prize, the Galley Beggar Press Prize, and have been published in the Best British Short Stories series. He works for the Open University as a Lecturer in Creative Writing.

The 2025 BBC National Short Story Award with Cambridge University (BBC NSSA) shortlist was announced on Thursday 11 September 2025 live on BBC Radio 4’s Front Row, as the prestigious award celebrates its 20th anniversary. The shortlist, featuring multi-award winning writers and ‘astonishing’ new talent, was praised for its ‘intimate,’ ‘elegant’ and ’nuanced’ explorations of relationships, community and the specificities of place set against a world in crisis.

Selected by a panel of previous winners and returning judges from across the Award’s 20-year history, the five-strong shortlist are: Costa Book of the Year 2011 and Booker Prize 2025 longlisted author Andrew Miller; multi-award winning Irish writer Caoilinn Hughes, Desmond Elliott Prize winning novelist and short story specialist Edward Hogan; and new names, British-Lebanese author Emily Abdeni-Holman, and Colwill Brown whose debut novel was published this year.

Set in locations from Derbyshire and Doncaster to Jerusalem and County Kildare, the stories explore ‘self-contained’ worlds often inspired by personal memories and experiences, from the complexities of marriage, to the mysteries of survival in crisis; from newly formed inter-generational bonds, to the quiet tension between people and place, each reveals the short story’s ‘unparalleled’ power to reflect ‘the times we are living through.’

For two decades this award has celebrated writers who are the UK’s finest exponents of the form.  James Lasdun secured the inaugural Award in 2006 for ‘An Anxious Man’. In 2012 when the Award expanded internationally for one year, Miroslav Penkov was victorious for his story, ‘East of the West’. Last year, the Award was won by Ross Raisin for ‘Ghost Kitchen’, a tense, cinematic story narrated by a bicycle courier and inspired by the gig economy and the ‘dark kitchens’ of the restaurant industry.

In its 20-year history, Sarah Hall, K J Orr, Naomi Wood, Jonathan Buckley, Julian Gough, Clare Wigfall, Cynan Jones, Lucy Caldwell, Ingrid Persaud, Saba Sams and David Constantine have also carried off the Award with shortlisted authors including Zadie Smith, Jackie Kay, William Trevor, Rose Tremain, Caleb Azumah Nelson, Naomi Alderman, Kamila Shamsie, K Patrick and Jacqueline Crooks.

This year’s judging panel was chaired by Di Speirs who has sat on every judging panel since the Award’s inception and is joined by the very first chair of judges, William Boyd as well as former winners and shortlisted writers Lucy Caldwell, Ross Raisin and Kamila Shamsie.

In a time when literary awards come and go, and can struggle for funding and airtime, the BBC National Short Story Award with Cambridge University continues to be a cause for joy.

From 15th to 18th September four of the shortlisted stories can be heard at 3.30 each afternoon with the fifth story in contention for the award broadcasting on Friday, 19th September, at 11.30pm. The winner of the 20th BBC National Short Story Award will be announced live on BBC Radio 4’s Front Row on Tuesday 30th September 2025.

Produced by Eilidh McCreadie

Published on Thursday, 18th September 2025.

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