New Voices: The Guardian 4th Estate BAME Short Story Prize 2017

Writers shortlisted for the Guardian 4th Estate BAME Short Story Prize read their shortlisted stories

Collected here are the six best stories chosen by the judging panel of the Guardian 4th Estate BAME short story prize 2017.

In them you’ll encounter a range of characters: an Indian soldier fighting for the British in WWII; a teenage girl fasting in a small London flat; an out-of-work dad in an urban playground; a woman cleaning the toilets in Hong Kong International airport; a wealthy Malaysian teenager in his last few days of school; and a septuagenarian arrested on New Year’s Eve.

Read here by the writers themselves, these stories will move, entertain and surprise you - and give a tantalising taste of the future work we might expect from these talented writers.

About the author

Arun Das is a former journalist and television producer from India who now lives in East London.

Jimi Famurewa is a writer and freelance journalist. He lives in London.

Born in Hong Kong, Kit Fan has won a Stephen Spender Prize for poetry in translation and the International HKU Poetry Prize. He lives in York.

Avani Shah has a BA and MA in Creative Writing from UEA and lives in Norwich.

Lisa Smith has worked as a documentary filmmaker and is now studying Creative Writing at Goldsmiths.

Henry Wong is completing a Masters in journalism at City University, London.