BBC International Short Story Award 2012

Clive Anderson is a barrister by training, but he is best known for being an award-winning presenter and comedy writer. He currently hosts Loose Ends and Unreliable Evidence on BBC Radio 4. Winner of the British Comedy Award in 1991, Clive began his success during his 15-year law career with stand-up comedy and script writing, before rising to fame as the host of Whose Line Is It Anyway? on radio and then television. Clive went on to front ten series of his own show, Clive Anderson Talks Back on Channel 4 and four series of Clive Anderson All Talk on BBC 1. As well as presenting several other TV and radio programmes, he has made many guest appearances on shows such as Have I Got News For You, QI, Mock the Week, and The Bubble.

Ross Raisin was born 1979, in Silsden, West Yorkshire. His second novel, Waterline, was published in July 2011 (Viking, Penguin). His first novel, God's Own Country, published in 2008, is a narrative told in the voice of a young Yorkshire hill farmer struggling against his community, his mind, and the outsiders moving into the countryside from towns and cities. The book won the Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year award in 2009 and a Betty Trask Award, and was shortlisted for six others. He has done journalistic feature work, mainly for the Guardian, and written short stories for Prospect and Esquire, The Sunday Times, and BBC Radio Three. Ross been working since 2010 with First Story, a charity that places writers in unprivileged schools to deliver creative writing workshops and produce anthologies of students' work. He also tutors for the Guardian/University of East Anglia Masterclass course (2011/12), City University Creative Writing MA and Arvon writing courses.

Di Speirs worked in theatre and for the Australian Broadcasting Corporation before joining the BBC in 1991 as a Woman's Hour producer. She edited the Woman's Hour serial for three years and produced the first ever Book of the Week. She is now Editor of the BBC London Readings Unit, responsible for around a third of the output in Book of the Week, a quarter of Book at Bedtime, as well as Afternoon Stories, Radio 3 readings and Woman's Hour dramas and Afternoon Plays adapted from novels and short stories. She has been instrumental in the BBC National Short Story Award since its inception seven years ago and is a regular judge on the panel. She was also a judge of the 2008 Asham Award and Chair of the Orange Award for New Writing 2010.