The Rhys Davies Short Story Competition is a distinguished national writing competition for writers born or living in Wales. Originally established in 1991, we are delighted to manage this prestigious award on behalf of The Rhys Davies Trust and in association with Parthian Books.

About Rhys Davies

Born in Blaenclydach, near Tonypandy in the Rhondda, in 1901, Rhys Davies was among the most dedicated, prolific, and accomplished of Welsh prose-writers in English. With unswerving devotion and scant regard for commercial success, he practised the writer’s craft for some fifty years, in both the short story and the novel form, publishing in his lifetime a substantial body of work on which his literary reputation now firmly rests. He wrote, in all, more than a hundred stories, twenty novels, three novellas, two topographical books about Wales, two plays, and an autobiography.
Awards
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1st Prize - £1,000 sterling and publication in a short story anthology to be published by Parthian Books in 2023.
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11 x Runners-up/Finalist Prizes - £100 each and publication in a short story anthology to be published by Parthian Books in 2023.
How to enter
Open for entries: MONDAY 12th DECEMBER 2022
Deadline for receipt of entries: THURSDAY 16th MARCH 2023 AT MIDNIGHT
How to enter:
- Read the Entry Rules, Terms and Conditions - 2023 Rhys Davies Short Story Competition
- Pay the entry fee and receive your unique reference number CLICK HERE. For details of eligibility for free entry, please consult the terms and conditions
- Please complete the entry form CLICK HERE.

We are delighted to announce that Jane Fraser will be guest judge for the 2023 competition
Jane Fraser lives, works and writes fiction in a house facing the sea in the village of Llangennith, in the Gower peninsula, south Wales.
She is the author of two collections of short fiction, The South Westerlies (2019) and Connective Tissue (2022), both published by leading UK indie, SALT. Her debut novel, Advent (2021) was published by Welsh women’s press, HONNO, and was awarded the Society of Authors Paul Torday Memorial Prize in 2022.
Her short stories have placed highly in major international competitions: she was a finalist in the Manchester Fiction Prize (2017) and she has been a runner-up, shortlisted or highly commended in the Fish Short Story Prize, the ABR Elizabeth Jolley Short Story Prize, the Cambridge Short Story Prize, and The Rhys Davies National Short Story Prize.
Her work has been widely anthologised, appearing in publications by New Welsh Review, The Lonely Crowd, TSS, Momaya Press, Retreat West, and Fish Publishing. In 2022, she was commissioned by BBC Radio 4 for the first time to write ‘Soft Boiled Eggs’, a short story broadcast as part of the Short Works series.
She has a B.Ed as a first degree and an MA and PhD in Creative Writing from Swansea University. She is also proud to be a Hay Festival Writer at Work.
Jane has recently been awarded a Society of Authors' grant to work on her latest novel: an intergenerational ecofeminist contemporary story set in Gower.
Twitter @jfraserwriter | Instagram @janefraserwriter | www.janefraserwriter.com