Colwill Brown wins the BBC National Short Story Award in its 20th year

Colwill Brown has won the 2025 BBC National Short Story Award for "You Cannot Thread a Moving Needle". The winner was announced on 30 September 2025 on BBC Radio 4's Front Row, in the award's twentieth anniversary year. Brown receives £15,000, and the other shortlisted writers £600 each.

The story is written in the second person and in South Yorkshire dialect. It follows a teenager, Shaz, whose life is changed by an assault by two boys, and traces her silence into adulthood while her assailants carry on unaffected. Brown has said it draws on memories of growing up in Doncaster in the late 1990s and early 2000s.

The other shortlisted writers were Emily Abdeni-Holman, Edward Hogan, Caoilinn Hughes and Andrew Miller. The panel was chaired by Di Speirs and included William Boyd, Lucy Caldwell, Kamila Shamsie and the previous year's winner, Ross Raisin. The five stories were broadcast on Radio 4 and collected in an anthology from Comma Press.

A dialect story written in the second person is a demanding thing to sustain, and a harder thing to read aloud. Its success here suggests that judges and broadcasters are prepared to back a distinctive voice over a smoother, more conventional one.

Sources: University of Cambridge: 2025 shortlist announcement; David Higham Associates: Colwill Brown wins BBC National Short Story Award.