CK Stead wins Sunday Times Short Story Award

29 March 2010

A 77 year-old from New Zealand has won the Sunday Times Short Story Award with 'Last Season's Man'. The story by CK Stead is set in Croatia and gives an account of a young author's struggles when he writes an honest and critical piece about the work of a well-respected writer, the piece causes a huge stir amongst intellectuals and consequently damages the young writer's reputation.
 

When discussing the winning title, Stead described how he drew inspiration from his own personal experiences whilst writing the story. The author suffered a stroke five years ago, which left him unable to read and write for a period of time and it was these struggles that gave him the basis for the piece. As well as the coveted accolade Stead also picked up £25,000 in prize money.
 

It is the first year that the newspaper has created an award for Short Story of the Year. Over 1000 entries were initially sent in, this was then whittled down to a longlist of 19 and following that a shortlist of 5 stories were then chosen, it was then up to the judges to decide on the winning story.
 

'Last Season's Man' was described by the judges as "how a story should be constructed and written". The judging panel consisted of Oscar nominated scriptwriter Nick Hornby, Booker Prize winner AS Byatt, author Hanif Kureishi, The Sunday Times Literary Editor Andrew Holgate and Lynn Barber author of An Education.
 

Compare prices for some of CK Stead previous novels and poetry books.