The Sunday Times EFG Private Bank Short Story Award 2013 is accepting entries

A prestigious panel of judges has been announced for the world's most valuable prize for a single short story. Novelist Joanna Trollope returns to the panel to judge the 2013 Award for the second consecutive year. She will be joined by award-winning novelists Andrew O'Hagan, Lionel Shriver and Sarah Waters. Completing the line-up are Andrew Holgate, Literary Editor of The Sunday Times, and Matthew Evans, Chairman of EFG Private Bank and the non-voting Chair of Judges.

The submission process for the fourth Sunday Times EFG Private Bank Short Story Award is now open. The deadline for submissions is 21 September 2012. Please check the prize page for details on how to enter.

A truly international prize, the Sunday Times EFG Private Bank Short Story Award is open to any novelist or short story writer from around the world who is published in the UK. Last year's winner was Kevin Barry for his story 'Beer Trip to Llandudno', and last year's longlist contained stories drawn from as far afield as Hong Kong, Ireland, the USA and Canada.

The judges are looking for an outstanding English-language story of 6,000 words or under from a fiction author from anywhere in the world who has been published in the UK or Ireland. The winner will receive £30,000, and the five shortlisted writers will each receive £1,000 as well as having their work published online. A longlist of 16 will be announced in January.

2012 winner Kevin Barry comments:

There is never a bad time to win a £30,000 short story award but an especially good time is the same week you publish a collection of your stories. Winning the award was a massive thrill in itself, naturally, but the lucky timing meant that my story collection, Dark Lies The Island, probably got more press coverage and more reviews than it would have done otherwise. It is a little crude, maybe, to mention the money, but the very generous nature of this prize is what helps to give it such prestige and is why it attracts so much attention. And of course the money helps to keep that nasty old wolf from the writer's door. So I'm happy to be crude