Many thanks to everyone who entered a story this month for the excellent theme of RECOVERY from Jan Kaneen. We have read some wide-ranging responses to it and enjoyed them all.

We had 151 entries this month so the cash prize for first place is £226 and second place £151. The People’s Prize will be announced along with the results.

Congrats to the writers of our 38 longlisted stories. Please don’t reveal which is yours as all reading and voting is anonymous. Good luck for the next round – we’ll be back with the shortlist on Monday!

Longlisted Stories

• Adding Worms Can Be Beneficial
• After Grief
• Alternative therapy
• And if the best arrangements are made
• Aunt Lilah is resting/restless
• Bed of Roses
• Breaking-up Bruises
• Buried
• Degrees of Corrosive Fanaticism
• Help is on its Way
• How to recover your dreams from the life everyone else seems to want
• If Someone You Love Hasn’t Recovered, Can You?
• In Twelve Years In and Out of Hospital, Mum Sat in the Waiting Room Playing Word Games to Occupy Her Mind
• Inheritance
• Interlude
• It’s not the first time he has come home from Uni to go to Defence Haircuts with his mum, all in the name of recovery
• Just Left With Crumbs
• Last Year’s Break-Up
• Martha Takes Her First Drive In Frank’s Car
• Passports From Dr. Harry
• Pieces of Our Boy
• Returning
• Rods, Cones, Driftwood And Shells
• Searching for a blazer on the school’s donated clothing rail
• She’d Dress Up Fancy Pretend It Was Our House
• She Will Recover Her Wings
• Silver flickers under the surface
• Still Life with Minotaur
• The Brink Of Belief
• The Flying Tortoise
• The monstera and I are hanging in there
• The only way I can make sense of the word ‘recovery’ is to smash it into pieces
• The Sea Change
• The Taste of Iron
• The virality of dad
• Visiting Mum
• What They Recovered, and What They Didn’t
• When They Tried to Make Me Neurotypical