The Theme, Date & New Venue for our Special 30th Event + Radio Interview
Our Special 30th event is on Sunday 9 November 2025 and the theme will be BEAUTY/BEAUTIFUL. It can be the beauty of anything - nature, landscape, people, writing, an object, a work of art or craft, the beauty of the accidental, a score or move in sports and games, day, the sky, music, beauty treatments/grooming, beautician, vanity, health & beauty, animals, inner beauty, hidden beauty, a beautiful friendship or even bread-making (the Beauty and the Yeast???) ...you name it, you can use it in your story.
NB Please remember that we are looking for STORIES, something with a 'narrative arc' to read to a live audience.
OUR NEW VENUE is the Lansdown Hall in Stroud and the event will be part of the 2025 Stroud Book Festival. The Cotswold Playhouse was unable to offer us any dates that would allow us to be part of the Book Festival. Like the Playhouse, the Lansdown Hall has a seating capacity of 150.
KEY DATES - Submissions will open on Sunday 10 August and close on Sunday 21 September. The results will be announced on Wednesday 1 October and tickets will go on sale on Friday 3 October from the Lansdown Hall website. If you're interested, please make a note of these dates.
As always, it will be free to submit and we accept both unpublished and previously published stories. Under our legendary Rule 11 (now 12!), the authors who read on Sunday are unable to submit to this event.
I will be co-judging this time with short story author and novelist Ali Bacon who has read a number of times at SSS and won awards for her short fiction. Ali's novel The Absent Heart was published in March this year.
Link to info about the JUDGES is here.
Link to the Rules and How to Submit is here.
Link to Tips on Writing for SSS is here. This is essential reading!
In the meantime, author Robin Booth and I had an interview about SSS on BBC Radio Gloucestershire with Nicky Price on 15 May.
Listen here on BBC iPlayer - from 2.14.37 to 2.32.27 -
https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m002c3vf
John
