Laura Theis, Iain Rowan and Liam Hogan among shortlistees for £500 Dinesh Allirajah prize

The shortlist for the 2025 Dinesh Allirajah Prize for short fiction has been announced. The prize is held in partnership with the University of Central Lancashire.

This year, participants were asked to write on the theme ‘The Unspoken’, submitting stories that use unanswered questions, ambiguous endings, subtext, silence and narrative gaps to produce "an impactful tale". Writers were directed to stories by Raymond Carver, Ernest Hemingway and Katherine Mansfield for inspiration, but encouraged to interpret the brief in their own way.

This year’s shortlistees include Mogford Short Story Prize-winner, Laura Theis, and Northern Writers Award-winner, Iain Rowan.

The full list of shortlisted authors is:

Edward Hogan

Laura Theis

JL Bogenschneider

Taysian Quinones

Francesca Todd

Iain Rowan

S Bhattacharya-Woodward

Liam Hogan

This year’s prize will be judged by co-editor of The Manchester Review Joseph Hunter, Man Booker Prize shortlisted author Alison Moore, last year’s winner Jacques Tsiantar and Dr Robert Duggan, senior lecturer in modern and contemporary literature at the University of Central Lancashire.

The prize was set up in 2014 following the death of Comma’s director and founding board member, writer Dinesh Allirajah. The prize aims to create a lasting legacy out of Dinesh’s love for writing short fiction during his lifetime.

Shortlisted author Bogenschneider said: "It’s a genuine pleasure to be shortlisted for this year’s Dinesh Allirajah Prize, supported by Comma Press, an independent publisher that continues to do much for the short form."

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