Send Nudes: By the winner of the BBC National Short Story Award 2022

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It's a fierce look into womanhood and girlhood. It's all about what it means to be a girl or a woman, using your body or being used, taking charge, growing up, making mistakes... some stories were almost feral and difficult to read, but I loved them all.

Patel is shortlisted for I’m a Fan, her debut novel which was recently longlisted for the Women’s prize for fiction and the Jhalak prize. Describing it as a critique of social media and heteronormative relationships, Lamorna Ash in the Guardian called it a “corrosive, brilliant debut”. Speirs said the judges “loved Patel’s book for its immediacy, vibrancy and shafts of spiky humour”. Frank drives the girls into town, pulling into a bus stop to drop them off. He passes Stella a roll of notes through the window, to pay for dinner. Jasmine is hopping on one foot. That’s disgusting, she says. Her eyes are wet with tears and a hot-pink rash has flared up on her ankle. Saba Sams wins 17th BBC National Short Story Award for Debut Story Celebrating the Power and Agency of YouthAt the villa, Stella sits on the veranda with the adults while Jasmine and Blue shower and get ready to go out. It’s almost like before Blue arrived: Claire leafing through a book, Frank loading a new film into his camera. He puts the previous canister carefully into his bag, and lets out a long, low whistle. What distinguishes her from millennial writers such as Ottessa Moshfegh, who shares her deadpan humour and visceral style, is that her characters aren’t jaded, but voracious. They’re not immune to existential angst – “Do you ever worry that nothing you do matters?” – but they get on with living, devouring new experiences with gusto. Does this herald a tonal shift in twentysomething fiction? It’s too early to tell, but it’s precisely this earthy resilience and joie de vivre that make Send Nudes so rare and uplifting. CHOSEN AS A BOOK OF THE 2022 BY THE GUARDIAN, STYLIST, VOGUE, GLAMOUR, COSMOPOLITAN, EVENING STANDARD, IRISH INDEPENDENT, AnOTHER, FOYLES, BOOKSHOP.ORG

Sams is the youngest author on this year’s shortlist, at 26, and is shortlisted for her short story collection Send Nudes, which highlights the confusing double standards facing women today. Madeleine Feeny in her Guardian review said Sams presented “acute portraits of the fragile intimacies and euphoric moments snatched by a generation of women coming of age into a precarious future”. Long described Send Nudes as an “exciting, empowering collection of short stories, full of knowing, daring, wit and range”. Under her makeup, Jasmine goes pink. Nico doesn’t notice; he’s looking at Blue. My English might not be good enough for this question, he says. Blue pulls her legs out of the pool and stands up. Stella thinks that if she had a camera, she’d take a photograph of Blue right there, on the edge of the pool like that. Altogether, these socially relevant themes, combined with deadpan dialogue and a fluid prose style give the collection a visceral energy. It is the kind of book that people will fangirl over, and rightly so. Blue’s enjoying this, Stella can tell. There’s something like laughter in her voice. That camera’s worth thousands, says Stella. Think of the films. They’ll be ruined.This year’s judging panel was chaired by novelist and broadcaster, Elizabeth Day. She was joined by Costa First Novel Award winning novelist Ingrid Persaud; writer, poet and editor, Will Harris; Booker Prize shortlisted novelist and Professor of Creative Writing, Gerard Woodward; and returning judge Di Speirs, Books Editor at BBC Audio. Jasmine keeps refusing to meet Blue’s eye. The ash falls from the end of her cigarette onto the table and scatters.