The Guardian 4th Estate BAME Short Story Prize 2018

Writers short-listed for the Guardian 4th Estate BAME Short Story Prize read their short-listed stories

Collected here are the six best stories chosen by the judging panel of the Guardian 4th Estate BAME short story prize 2018.

In them you’ll encounter a range of lives and situations: an armless swimmer representing Cultural Revolution China in the Paralympic Games; an encounter between a young girl and a misanthropic B&B owner in the wake of the Grenfell tower fire; a schoolgirl helping her grandmother in a Chinese take-away in Hull; the residents of a street united by a piano; a historic town in China invaded by a powerful stench; and a teenage girl struggling with her gender in a small town steeped in folklore.

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.

The full list of narrators includes: Jason Deelchand, Gurnaik Johal, Varaidzo, Kit Fan, Savannah Burney, and Yiming Ma.