‘I am remotely employed to write the obituaries of semi-prominent shareholders of the least unethical of the four big banks for a bi-monthly internal publication … I am trying to determine the rate of my hairline’s retreat. Each year, in June, I take a photo of my forehead with my laptop’s inbuilt camera. Then I compare the images, like maps of the Arctic Ice. ‘
– from Stop Motion by Benjamin Hickey,
winner, 2022 Newcastle Short Story Award.

As readers, we can’t help wondering about our writers. We want to know what their lives are like, and whether they experienced what their characters did. But that’s not really what fiction tells us. Fiction tells us what the writer’s imagination is like and what she can conjure. And it’s a gift when fiction can take us into an imagination unlike our own and expand us. That’s what the prize-winning stories did this year, each in their own way.
Judges Joey Bui and Bram Presser