ALCS Tom-Gallon Trust Award

An annual award for a short story, financed by a bequest made by Miss Nellie Tom-Gallon in memory of her brother and generously supported by ALCS and Hawthornden Literary Retreat. The winner will receive £2,000, the runner-up £1,000, and £500 is awarded to each of the shortlist (up to four authors).

The ALCS Tom-Gallon Trust Award is currently open for submissions.
Deadline for entries: Friday 31 October 2025.

For a short story of up to 5,000 words. The winner will receive £2,000, the runner-up £1,000, and £500 to each of the shortlist (up to four authors).

Deadline: Friday 31 October 2025

Entry Criteria

The author must be ordinarily resident in the United Kingdom, Commonwealth or the Republic of Ireland.
The author must have had at least one short story published or accepted for publication.
The story submitted must be in English and must not be a translation.
The story submitted may be published or unpublished.
The work must not have been previously submitted for the ALCS Tom-Gallon Trust Award.
The work must not exceed 5,000 words.
All submissions must have been written by the author and cannot contain the use of AI generated works.

Conditions of entry

Present employees (or anyone currently connected with the administration of the Society of Authors’ grants and prizes) or members of the SoA Management Committee may not apply for any of the grants and prizes administered by the Society of Authors.

The judges' decision (both as to eligibility and the winning entries) shall be final. The judges reserve the right not to make any ALCS Tom-Gallon Trust Awards if, in their opinion, no works entered reach a sufficiently high standard.

How to enter

Upload one (and only one per author) short story (maximum length 5,000 words), published or unpublished, formatted in line with the following style guide:

A4 paper size
12 point font size
Page numbers must be used
Word count must be printed on the first page and should not exceed 5,000 words
Title of the story should appear on the first page
The author’s name should not appear anywhere on the story (it is acceptable to have the authors name in the file name)
Submit in .doc/.docx/.pdf format
File name should be title of story

The prize will be presented at the annual Society of Authors' Awards ceremony in 2026.
For any queries, please email prizes@societyofauthors.org

Person submitting *

First

Last

Email *

Author name *

First

Last

Short story title *

Story must be in English

Author's country of residence *

The author must ordinarily be resident in the United Kingdom, Commonwealth or the Republic of Ireland.

Please list your most recently published short story (print or online) including the publisher and date of publication

Title of previously published story:

Where was it published:

When was it accepted for publication:

Author biography *

Please write a short bio. This may typically include recent publications, the name, date, and details of previous prizes won, education, training, and career background, and pronouns.

Entry Submission

Please submit one (and only one) short story (maximum length 5,000 words), published or unpublished, formatted in line with the following style guide:

A4 paper size
12 point font size
Page numbers must be used
Word count must be printed on the first page and should not exceed 5,000 words
The author’s name should NOT appear anywhere in the story
Submit in .doc/.docx/.pdf format
File name should be title of story

NB: Your name will appear in any confirmation emails that you receive.

Short story upload:

Click or drag a file to this area to upload.

If the file is too large to upload to this form please contact prizes@societyofauthors.org.

Eligibility Confirmation *

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I agree to abide by the conditions of entry. I confirm that the author and short story meet the criteria for entry as detailed above.

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Where did you hear about this prize? *

The 2025 ALCS Tom-Gallon Trust Award winner

Katie Hale for ‘Raise, or How to Break Free of the Ground, or The Lakeland Dialect for Slippery is Slape and to Form it in the Mouth Requires an Act of Falling’

The 2025 ALCS Tom-Gallon Trust Award runner-up

Hamish Gray for ‘But the fire will spit again’

The 2025 ALCS Tom-Gallon Trust Award shortlist

Molly Aitken for ‘This is How it Happens’

Naomi Alderman for ‘God’s Doorbell’

Daisy Fletcher for ‘The Triangle’

Somto Ihezue for ‘Into Duty, Into Longing, Into Sparrows’ (Beneath Ceaseless Skies)

‘The stories on this year’s shortlist share a flair for language alongside a willingness to take risks. Each is built around the kernel of the sentence, but achieves a cohesiveness that yields deep emotion, often in service of profound ideas. Incantatory, spell-binding and resonant, they linger on the mind. We are delighted to share them.’
— Andre Bagoo, 2025 ALCS Tom-Gallon Trust Award judge

With thanks, the judges of the 2025 ALCS Tom-Gallon Trust Award:

Andre Bagoo

Andre Bagoo is a writer, poet and journalist from Trinidad and Tobago. He is the author of the interlinked fiction sequence The Dreaming, a story of which was shortlisted for the Commonwealth Short Story Prize. He has been a finalist in the Ernest Hemingway Foundation’s annual short fiction competition and longlisted for the Bristol Short Story Prize and the Desperate Literature Prize for Short Fiction. His stories have appeared in publications such as adda, Callaloo, Michigan Quarterly Review and PREE. His essay collection on writing and art, The Undiscovered Country, won the 2021 OCM Bocas Prize for Non-Fiction.

Louise Brealey

Louise Brealey, also credited as Loo Brealey, is an English actress, writer and journalist. Born in Bozeat, Northamptonshire, England. She attended Kimbolton School, proceeding to read History at Cambridge. She then trained at the Lee Strasberg Institute in New York City and with clown teacher Philippe Gaulier. She has written on cinema, art and music since her teens, contributing reviews and features for magazines including Premiere UK, Empire, Radio Times, SKY, The Face, Neon, AnOther and Total Film. In March 2012 Brealey produced, co-wrote and co-starred in The Charles Dickens Show, a children’s comedy drama for BBC 2.

Yan Ge

Yan Ge was born in Sichuan, China in 1984. She is a fiction writer in both Chinese and English, and is the author of thirteen books in Chinese, including five novels. She has received numerous awards and was named by People’s Literature magazine as one of twenty future literature masters in China. Her work has been translated into eleven languages, including English, French and German. The latest English translation of her novel, Strange Beasts of China, was one of the New York Times Notable Books of 2021. Yan’s English writing has appeared in the New York Times, the Irish Times, TLS, Granta, the Stinging Fly and elsewhere. She has an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of East Anglia where she was the recipient of the UEA International Award 2018/19. Her English language debut short story collection Elsewhere was published by Faber in the UK and Scribner in the USA in summer 2023. Yan lives in Norwich with her husband and son.

Peter Hobbs

Peter Hobbs is the author of two novels, The Short Day Dying and In The Orchard, The Swallows, as well as a collection of short stories, “I Could Ride All Day in My Cool Blue Train.” He is also the co-editor of Sex & Death, an anthology of short stories. His work has won a Betty Trask Award, and been shortlisted for the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award, the John Lewellyn Rhys Prize and the Whitbread First Novel Award. He has been a judge for numerous literary prizes, including the BBC National Short Story Award, and is a writer-in-residence for the schools literacy charity, First Story.

2024

Winner: Alexandra Ye for ‘This Story’
Runner-up: Edward Hogan for ‘Little Green Man’
Shortlist:
Hussani Abdulrahim for ‘Arewa Boys’
Trahearne Falvey for ‘The Staring Contest’
Naomi Wood for ‘A/A/A/A/’

2023

Winner: Ciarán Folan for ‘A Day’
Runner-up: Karen Stevens for ‘Among the Crows’
Shortlist:
Joe Bedford for ‘The Christening’
Kerry Hood for ‘The Sunbathers’
Niamh Mac Cabe for ‘Sky an Iris’
Lishani Ramanayake for ‘Amba Yahulowo’

2022

Winner: Kanya D’Almeida for “I Cleaned The __”
Runner-up: Dean Gessie for “Head Smashed in Buffalo Jump”
Shortlist:
- Sheila Armstrong for ‘Red Market’
- David Frankel for ‘The Memory System’
- Ben Tufnell for ‘Last Days’
- Roland Watson-Grant for ‘The Disappearance of Mumma Dell’

2021

Winner: DM O’Connor for I Told You not to Fly so High
Runner-up: Sean Lusk for The Hopelessness of Hope
Shortlist:
- Maeve O’Lynn for Eventually Meeeting the Sky Somewhere
- Anne Aylor for The House of Wild Beasts
- Alison Littlewood for Swanskin
- Dafydd Mills Daniel for What the Deal is

2020

Winner: Wendy Riley for Eva at the End of the World
Runner-up: Diana Powell for Whale Watching
Shortlist
- Ani Kayode Somotchukwu for The Bird that Fluttered Free
- Lynda Clark for Ghillie’s Mum
- Carol Farrelly for High Water
- Catriona Ward for The Pier at Ardentinny

2019

Winner: Dima Alzayat for Once We Were Syrians
Runner-up: Bunmi Ogunsiji for Blessing
Shortlist
- Niall Bourke for Gerardo Dreams of Chillies
- Claire Fuller for Tiny and Pointed
- Bruce Meyer for The Kids

2018

Winner: Chris Connolly for The Speed of Light and How It Cannot Help Us
Runner-up: Benjamin Myers for A Thousand Acres of English Soil
Shortlist
- Kirsty Logan for My Body Cannot Forget Your Body
- Valerie O’Riordan for Livestock
- Gabi Reigh for It Was a Very Good Year
- Jacky Taylor for A Brief Period of Rejoicing.

2017

Winner: Frances Thimann for Shells
Runner-up: Becky Tipper for The Rabbit

2016

Winner: Claire Harman for Otherwise Engaged
Runner-up: Jessie Greengrass for Dolphin

2015

Winner: Maria C. McCarthy for More Katharine Than Audrey
Runner-up: Caroline Price for Vin Rouge

2014

Winner: Benjamin Myers for The Folk Song Singer
Runner-up: Claire Harman for Poor Magigie Kirkpatrick

2013

Winner: Samuel Wright for Best Friend
Runner-up: Lucy Wood for Wisht

2011

Winner: Emma Timpany for The Pledge
Runner-up: Miriam Burke for A Splash of Words

2010

Winner: Carys Davies for The Quiet
Joint runners-up: Susannah Rickards for The Paperback Macbeth and Simon van Booy for Little Birds

2009

Winner: Rosemary Mairs for My Father’s Hands
Specially commended: Huw Lawrencefor Keeping On

2008

Winner: Alison MacLeod for Dirty Weekend

2007

Winner: Claire Keegan for The Parting Gift

2006

Winner: Bethan Roberts for An Elephant in the Thames

2005

Winner: Colette Paul for O Tell me the Truth About Love

2004

Winner: Claire Keegan for Men and Women

2003

Winner: Judith Ravenscroft for As She Waited for Spring

2001

Winner: Paul Blaney for Apple Tennis

1999

Winner: Grace Ingoldby for The Notion of Deuce

1996

Winner: Leo Madigan for Packing for Wednesday

1994

Winner: Janice Fox for A Good Place to Die

1992

Winner: David Callard for Reading the Signals

1990

Winner: Richard Austin for Sister Monica’s Last Journey

1988

Winner: Alan Beard for Taking Doreen Out of the Sky

1986

Winner: Lawrence Scott for The House of Funerals

1984

Winner: Janni Howker for The Egg Man

1982

Winner: Dermot Healy for The Tenant

1980

Winner: Alan McConnell for The Comrades Marathon

1978

Winner: Michael Morrissey for An Evening With Ionesco

1976

Winner: Jackson Webb for Vassili

1974

Winner: Neilson Graham for Anscombe

1972

Winner: Kathleen Julian for Catch Two

1970

Winners: A. Craig Bell for The Nest and Aileen Pennington for The Princess and the Pussy-cat

1966

Winner: Gillian Edwards for An Evening in September

1964

Winners: Peter Greave for The Wonderful Day and Jean Stubbs for A Child’s Four Seasons

1959

Winner: Harold Elvin for God’s Right Hand Upon My Shoulder

1957

Winner: E.W. Hildick for A Casual Visit

1955

Winner: Robert Roberts for Conducted Tour

1953

Winner: Maurice Cranston for A Visit to the Author

1951

Winner: Fred Urquhart for The Ploughing Match

1949

Winner: Olivia Manning for The Children

1947

Winner: Dorothy K. Haynes for The Head

1945

Winner: Jack Aistrop for Death In the Midst of What

1943

Winner: Elizabeth Myers for A Well Full of Leaves

Tom Gallon and Miss Nellie Tom-Gallon

This prize was originally financed by a bequest made by Miss Nellie Tom-Gallon in memory of her brother. Tom Gallon was a British playwright and novelist (1866–1914). Some of his most notable works include: Tatterley: The Story of a Dead Man (1897) A Prince of Mischance: A Novel (1897), The Kingdom of Hate: A Romance (1899) and The Girl Behind the Keys (1903). Miss Nellie Tom-Gallon (1874–1938) was also an author and publicist. Her works include: The Dawn of Desire (1927), Full Passionate Mood (1928) and I Meant No Harm! (1937).

Hawthornden Foundation

Hawthornden Foundation is a private charitable foundation supporting contemporary writers and the literary arts. Established by Drue Heinz, the noted philanthropist and patron of the arts, the Foundation is named after Hawthornden Castle in Midlothian, Scotland, where an international residential fellowship program provides month-long retreats for creative writers from all disciplines to work in peaceful surroundings. In addition, the Foundation sponsors the annual Hawthornden Prize, one of Britain’s oldest and foremost literary awards, and provides grant support to other literary programs.

Author’s Licensing and Collecting Society

Authors’ Licensing and Collecting Society (ALCS) is a not-for-profit membership organisation started by writers for the benefit of writers. They are open to all types of writer, and owned by our members. ALCS collects money that’s due to members for secondary uses of their work. These might include activities like photocopies, cable retransmission, digital reproduction and educational recording.