The 2021 Retreat West Prize Longlists

We are excited to reveal the longlists for the 2021 Retreat West Prize. Many thanks to everyone who sent stories across the 3 categories this year. We received just under 400 stories in total. Congratulations to the writers whose stories have gone through to our longlists!

Reading remains anonymous so please no telling if your story appears here.

Short Story Prize Longlist

  • All Doors Will Open
  • An Open Garden
  • A Trip to the Island, One Last Time
  • Crosshairs
  • Five Across
  • Grit
  • How to Keen Them Away
  • How the Northern Light Gets In
  • Insert Row / Delete Row
  • Lockdown Differences
  • Lucky Lulu
  • Nine Storeys High
  • On Tuesdays I Clean the House
  • Peel
  • Reclamation
  • Rich at Last
  • Self Archaeology
  • Stuck for Words
  • The Critical Scrooge Syndrome
  • The Girl with Bees in Her Hair
  • The Jellyfish at the Traffic Lights
  • The Leonids
  • The Lighthouse Keeper’s Wife
  • The Limits of Wings
  • The Lockdown Golem
  • The Mystery of the Martian Whale
  • The Seven Ages of Lone
  • The Visitor
  • Twenty-One Scars
  • Virus
  • Visiting Hours
  • Yet Another ‘Missing Children’ Poster Adorns the Lampposts of a North-East Fishing Village
  • Yours

Flash Fiction Prize Longlist

  • A Cast of Crabs
  • A Walk in the Woods
  • A Woodcarver’s Love
  • All That Remains
  • All The Times We Could Have Eaten Fish Together
  • Bring me the heart of Eduardo Armando Jimenez ‘El Chipolito’ Garcia! On a silver platter. With a green salad and water cress garnish (no capers)
  • Button Bus
  • Cold Snap Later, With Falling Iguanas
  • Cow Tree
  • Curriculum Vitae
  • Dad Wrote My Name in Dog-Shit
  • Deep Secrets
  • Dog Days
  • Don’t Feed the Seagulls For They Will End Up Knowing Where You Live
  • Down by the River
  • Eat Your Heart Out
  • Epitaph
  • Everything You Have Loved is Here, When Are You Coming Home?
  • Falling Woman
  • First We Take Manhattan
  • Hands
  • Hands Across the Ages
  • No Wide-Eyes Birds
  • Lost in Time
  • Memories Bundled Tightly Listen as the Fugue Plays Out
  • Paper
  • Rewilding
  • Salt, Iron and Oxidation
  • Seven Shoes I Have Worn in My Life
  • Sprawl
  • Starter Home
  • Storm Debris
  • That Wasn’t My Intention, But Maybe It Was
  • The Art of Bibliomancy
  • The Buttero
  • The Boy
  • The Dead of Night
  • The Five Stages of Grief
  • The Invocation of Saint Florian
  • The Tell-Tale Chirp of an Olive Warbler
  • The Turning Point
  • The Weathering
  • Turtle Houses
  • What My Therapist Calls Grounding to Calm My Triggered Body
  • When You Come Home from Nashville
  • Where You Are Sleeping
  • Writing Backwards

Micro Fiction Prize Longlist

  • A Viable Career Path
  • America
  • An Education
  • Body of Christ
  • Charlie Has Gone
  • Cliched Love
  • Cornfields
  • Girls of Summer
  • Henry the Navigator and other Useful Prompts
  • I Am Sailing, Very Far Away
  • It’s a beautiful day for a picnic, but you’re not invited
  • In Memory of Lemon
  • Lycra Slaves
  • Moleskin Pad, Box of Biros
  • No Rain
  • One For Sorrow
  • On The Way To Comic Con, Superman Makes An Unsettling Discovery
  • Parkout in Andulucia
  • Robert
  • Sand
  • Scratch Art for Grown-ups
  • She Was Definitely Not a Dirne but the Dress Code Called for Dirndl
  • Signing on the Dotted Line
  • Summer of 1963
  • The Ocean is My Lover
  • There’s nothing so clean as my burger machine – you deserve a break today
  • Tom’s Toy Gun
  • Too Many Debts to Die
  • You Said You’d Always Wait for Me

Best of luck in the next round of judging! We’ll be back with the shortlists in late January and in the meantime – have a great festive season!