Picture by Laura Briedis at Unsplash

Thank you to everyone who entered our competition. Our readers have been hard at work and we now have our longlist. Congratulations to all whose stories are here – please celebrate this success far and wide, but without giving away which story is yours as our judging remains anonymous.

Commiserations to those whose stories aren’t listed. The standard in this round was exceptionally high and you should know you are in very good company!

We’re now re-reading all the stories on the longlist and preparing the shortlist. This will be published next week when the shortlisted stories will be passed to Anika Carpenter, our Guest Judge, for her deliberations.

For those who requested reader feedback, thanks again for your support. We’ll be emailing feedback in the next week.

Longlist

• A city break
• A partial execution of the lobster quadrille, Maidstone 1956
• A stirring of wings
• Aurora Borealis
• Broom Hill to Sillington Village: 5.8kilometres, moderate
• Double Fisherman’s Knot
• Everything comes in threes
• Four stupid monkeys
• Hook line sinker
• Life O-Level
• Middle-aged woman in rip current
• Mr Pearl
• My procrastination (on the eve of the apocalypse)
• Pillar box grandad
• Six starts to Ruby’s first day at school
• Soul cleanse
• The tree wife
• This isn’t the start of the story
• Utterly nutterly
• What do you do afterwards