The Jane Austen Literacy Foundation Writing Competition 2025 has been a great success. Our theme was ‘The Power of Reading’, we had entries from over 30 countries. Our panel of volunteer judges, led by Jane MacKenzie, first narrowed it down to a longlist of a dozen short stories.
Our three winning stories were chosen from the longlist of twelve by our second panel of six judges:
The three winning stories were then published online for the public to vote and pick our 1st place winner for 2025.
THE PRIZE - All three winning stories will be recorded as an audiobook by multi award winning Austen narrator, Alison Larkin, and released later in the year for all to hear.
Congratulations to Lisette Abrahams, Janine Harris and Jo Bardsley for writing the Jane Austen Literacy Foundation Winning Stories of 2025.
Scroll down to register and receive an email notification for our next writing competition, launching March 2026.
2025 Winner: Lisette Abrahams
2025 1st place WINNER
Story Time by Lisette Abrahams
Lisette writes poetry and short fiction in her spare time. Recent successes include a story longlisted in the New Writers 1000-Word Short Story Competition 2024, a story shortlisted in the Oxford Flash Fiction Prize, and achieving first place in the Fiction Factory Flash Fiction competition.
Lisette’s work has appeared in several short story and poetry anthologies, and her first literary heroines were Elizabeth Bennet, Tess Durbeyfield and Anne of Green Gables.
Lisette currently works part time in the NHS as a substance misuse practitioner, and part time as an English teacher. Lisette lives in Surrey with her husband, sons, and two entitled cats, Betty and Gilbert.
joint second place winners
(in story alphabetical order)
2025 Winner: Janine Harris
The Book Armoury by Janine Harris
Janine Harris is an emerging writer with a deep passion for storytelling. As a mother of four, Janine weaves together the everyday moments of family life, her love of nature, travel and her keen observations of the world into her writing, allowing her to create vivid, relatable narratives that resonate with readers.
Winner of the Brisbane Scribes and Gold Coast Writers Association Micro Fiction competition 2024: Shortlisted for GCWA Micro fiction competition 2025, long listed for the Northern Beaches Readers Festival short story competition 2024: Finalist in the WOW Women on Writing Summer Short Story Competition 2024, Long listed in Anthology Magazine Nature short story competition 2024.
2025 Winner: Jo Bardsley
Wandering Off by Jo Bardsley
Jo Bardsley grew up in the Outback of Western Australia, with no TV. Per mother banned science fiction and made Jo read the classics to try to stop per staying up all night reading. It didn’t work.
Jo’s fiction work has been published in Mslexia and Swamp Writing and often explores marginalised experiences. Jo teaches young adults with profound learning difficulties and in the past has taught in West Africa, Italy and the States.
Jo currently per lives in Walthamstow with per wife and children. Per loves swimming and traction engines and can be found on Bluesky @jobardsley.bsky.social
THANK YOU
We would sincerely like to thank all of the volunteers who work behind the scenes on our Writing Competition, including our lead judge, Jane MacKenzie, our competition administrator, Delicia Johnson, our judging panels and promoters.
We also would like to thank everyone who entered our competition, read our finalist stories and voted to choose our winner - we hope you enjoyed it as much as we did!
WRITING COMPETITION 2026
If you would like to be sent an email when our next short story writing competition is launched at the end of March 2026, fill in the form below: