There is in the short story, at its most characteristic, something we do not often find in the novel, Frank O’Connor wrote, "an intense awareness of human loneliness." The stories shortlisted for the BBC National Short Story Award with BookTrust 2017 all feature characters that are disconnected, willingly or unwillingly, from those around them: a mysterious out-of-towner is shunned by her new colleagues; a grieving husband retreats into his old compulsion for hoarding; a promising academic risks his career for a casual liaison with a younger man. And whether we follow the characters’ need to be alone – like the fisherman drifting dangerously far from shore – or trace it back to its root – like the daughter burying her violent father – what we find there is always unexpected. This year’s shortlist was selected by authors Eimear McBride, Jon McGregor and Sunjeev Sahota, as well as BBC Radio’s Di Speirs and acclaimed novelist Joanna Trollope who chaired the panel and introduces the collection.

Benjamin Markovits grew up in Texas, London, Oxford and Berlin. He has published seven novels, including Either Side of Winter, about a New York private school, and a trilogy on the life of Lord Byron: Imposture, A Quiet Adjustment and Childish Loves. His most recent novel, You Don't Have To Live Like This, about an experimental community in Detroit, won the James Tait Black Prize for Fiction in 2015. He won a Pushcart Prize for his short story Another Sad, Bizarre Chapter in Human History. Granta selected him as one of the Best of Young British Novelists in 2013.

Cynan Jones is the author of five novels, The Long Dry, Everything I Found on the Beach, The Dig, Bird, Blood, Snow and Cove. His work is widely translated, and short stories have appeared on BBC Radio 4 and in a number of anthologies and publications including Granta Magazine and The New Yorker. He also scripted an episode of the television crime drama Hinterland. He has won a Betty Trask Award, the Wales Book of the Year Fiction Prize, and a Jerwood Fiction Prize, and a chapter of The Dig was shortlisted for the Sunday Times EFG Private Bank Short Story Award in 2013. His latest novel Cove is currently longlisted for the Europese Literatuurprijs (in the Netherlands).

Helen Oyeyemi is the author of several highly acclaimed novels, including The Icarus Girl (2005); The Opposite House (2007); White is for Witching (2009), which won a Somerset Maugham Award and was a Shirley Jackson Award finalist; Mr Fox (2011) and Boy, Snow, Bird (2014), which was a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize. Her short story collection, What is not yours is not yours was published in 2016 and won the PEN Open Book Award. Helen was selected as one of Granta's Best Young British Novelists in 2013. She studied social and political sciences at Corpus Christi, Cambridge.

Will Eaves was the Arts Editor of the Times Literary Supplement from 1995 to 2011. He teaches in the Writing Programme at the University of Warwick. He is the author of four novels: The Oversight ( 2001; shortlisted for the Whitbread - now Costa - First Novel Award), Nothing To Be Afraid Of (2005; shortlisted for the Encore Award), This Is Paradise (2012), and The Absent Therapist ( 2014; shortlisted for the Goldsmiths Prize); and two collections of poetry: Sound Houses ( 2011) and The Inevitable Gift Shop ( 2016; shortlisted for the Ted Hughes Award for New Work in Poetry).

Jenni Fagan has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and was shortlisted for the Dundee International Book Prize, the Desmond Elliott Prize, and the James Tait Black Prize for her debut novel The Panoptican (2012). In 2013, she was selected as one of Granta's Best Young British Young Novelists and appointed as a writer-in-residence at the University of Edinburgh.