ABOUT

Formed in 2011, Stroud Short Stories is a twice-yearly live lit event described by the Cheltenham Literature Festival as "possibly the best short story event in the South West".

SSS is independent and not-for-profit and has been run by local short fiction author John Holland since 2014. Our aim is to encourage, showcase and promote contemporary short story writing in Gloucestershire.

We celebrated both our 5th and 10th anniversaries with hugely successful 'Greatest Hits' events at Cheltenham Literature Festival.

In June 2024 John Holland/Stroud Short Stories was awarded the Stroud News & Journal Community Award In the category Contribution to the Arts.

We have now published three anthologies of the stories read at our events. The latest, Volume Three covering the seven events from 2018 to 2022, was shortlisted as the best UK anthology by an independent publisher of 2022-23. Check out our anthologies here.

A new anthology, Stroud Short Stories Volume Four 2022-2025, (featuring the 60 stories by 40 writers from our last six events) will be published in 2026.

Now in our fifteenth year, there remains no charge to submit stories for an SSS event and we accept both published and unpublished stories. 

Check out our Tips for Writing for SSS here.

Subscribe to SSS emails about submissions, events and tickets here.

See our rules and how to submit here.

Watch some of our past events on our YouTube channel here.