It gives us great pleasure to announce the winning and shortlisted stories in the 2025 Historical Writers’ Association (HWA) Dorothy Dunnett Short Story Competition.
The winning story in the 2025 HWA Dorothy Dunnett Short Story Competition
The winner of the 2025 HWA Dorothy Dunnett Short Story Competition:
Final Score by Sean Lusk
The judges say: “A brilliantly-crafted and poignant story set in the wake of WWI. The dry, courageous narrator delivers a heart-rending and thought-provoking story of a veteran playing piano for the silent movies.”
Highly commended
Two shortlisted stories are also highly commended:
We Bring Miracles by Joseph Dragovich
“A travelling revival show at work in America — a vivid, immersive tale with a convincing cast that elegantly builds the tension to a satisfying, surprising conclusion.”
Poacher Turned Game Keeper by Alex Edwards
“A witty, lively tale of a bounder’s life in the Riviera between the wars. Cleverly plotted with some lovely scene-setting amidst the crackling prose.”
Shortlisted
Three more stories are shortlisted in this year’s competition:
An Insignificant Act by Liz Kershaw
“A clever twist on a familiar story from the Tudor court as the lives of a serving maid and a princess intersect in a damp castle. A very satisfying conclusion and a great voice.”
Octagon by Sophie Lenoir
“A medieval stone mason travels to the land of the Franks and works on a cathedral. An elegant, elegiac story of craft, belonging and creation.”
Barred by Elaine O’Connor
“A rousing story of a woman battling the establishment with the support of her new husband in 1930s Liverpool. Sparkling study of a deeply sympathetic woman.”
Congratulations to the winner and to all the shortlisted authors! They’re invited to the HWA awards ceremony on 19 November, 2025, where they’ll receive their prizes.
HWA Chair Imogen Robertson says: “The entries to the competition this year were again at an incredibly high standard — all of the shortlisted titles are brilliantly written — and it is a delight to see so many different types of story on the shortlist. Witty, thought-provoking, heart-breaking, hopeful, cynical, or insightful, this shortlist demonstrates the potential of historical fiction to continually surprise.”
We’ll publish all six of these short stories as an anthology in time for the awards celebration in November. Final Score will also be published here in Historia and in the Dorothy Dunnett Society magazine, Whispering Gallery.
Many thanks to our judges, who worked hard to choose 25 longlisted entries and then select only six for this year’s shortlist and winner. The final round judges were: Janet Angelini, Katherine Clements, Norah Perkins and Flora Rees.
See the longlisted stories in this year’s competition.
Past winners of the HWA Dorothy Dunnett Short Story Prize:
2024: St Kilda Bird Song by KF MacCarthy
2023: Hecate’s Daughter by Jo Tiddy
2022: Collapse by Chrissy Sturt
2021: His Mother’s Quilt by Naomi Kelsey
2020: The Race by Alice Fowler
2019: The Daisy Fisher by Kate Jewell
2018: Nineteen Above Discovery by Jennifer Falkner
2017: A Poppy Against the Sky by Annie Whitehead
You may also enjoy reading these two features Sean Lusk has written for Historia:
How Mary Wortley Montagu and other great 18th-century women were forgotten
The strange death of the Levant company (and how a clock taught me about it)
