JUDGES

The Judges for our Sunday 9 November  2025 event on the theme of BEAUTY are Ali Bacon and John Holland


We are currently closed for submissions but open on 10 August 2025

Please Note -  Both judges read ALL stories submitted. All stories are judged 'blind' ie all stories are received by our administrator Christiane, who ensures that no personal information about the authors is passed on to our judges. 


Ali Bacon has been writing and performing short stories since 2015 and has appeared at events in Bristol, Bath, Cheltenham and St Andrews in Scotland as well as Stroud. In 2027 she won the Evesham Festival of Words short story competition, and in 2019 the Bristol Short Story Prize Local Award. She has read six times at Stroud Short Stories and has co-judged SSS regularly since 2017.

Ali also writes full length fiction including two historical novels, In the Blink of an Eye (Linen Press 2028) and The Absent Heart published in March this year and inspired by the letters of Robert Louis Stevenson.

She lives in South Gloucestershire where she is a long-standing member of the Just Write Bristol Collective.

Ali's website is https://alibacon.com/about/



This event will be John Holland's 24th as both SSS Organiser/Editor and judge. John has now been running Stroud Short Stories for eleven years. A former librarian, library campaigner and satirical gag writer for the BBC and Punch magazine, John started writing short fiction in 2012, taking over the running of SSS in 2014. In June 2024 he was awarded the Stroud News & Journal Community Award for his Contribution to the Arts in running Stroud Short Stories.
John has now hung up his pen, but between 2012 and 2022, he had more than 100 stories and flash pieces published in anthologies, magazines and online. He was also lucky enough to have won first prize in five international short fiction contests, including InkTears Short Story Contest, Dorset Fiction Prize and To Hull and Back. He's also been runner up, short listed, long listed, commended, etc in competitions over 60 times.

John has performed his stories at live lit events in London, Birmingham and across the south west.

John lives in Ebley in Stroud.

X (formerly Twitter) @JohnHolland52

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