Last Saturday, the International Jay Yes Short Story Contest 2026 released its final results. The top twenty stories that are going to be published in two volumes of an anthology. When we contacted Fiona Harvie, Brisbane, Australia, the writer of “A Matter of Death and Life” she generously shared about the genesis of this story, “It lies in the Sri Lankan Civil War (July 1983–May 2009), a conflict that pitted the Sri Lankan government against the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) as they fought to establish an independent Tamil state following decades of ethnic discrimination. Though I migrated to Australia as a young child; my family maintained deep connections with loved ones back home. The violence devastatingly affected them. The backdrop of my narrative centres on the 1990 siege of Jaffna, which triggered a catastrophic humanitarian crisis and widespread civilian displacement. Many who fled eventually sought refuge in Australia. Through both my legal career as a solicitor and my active involvement in the expatriate Sri Lankan community, I listened to their harrowing survival stories. These firsthand accounts profoundly shaped and inspired my narrative. My protagonist, Premala, is a composite of the resilient refugee survivors I met and assisted during their resettlement. As a writer, I wanted to capture the heartbreaking, impossible choices these women had to make—and the enduring legacy of grief and guilt they carried forward. Finally, I am deeply grateful to my writing group and beta readers, whose invaluable feedback helped bring this story to life.
“Writing ‘Unit 734’ was an exercise in asking the people it processes can change whether a system built to process people. I’m grateful the story found readers who engaged with that question,” said Andrei Romanov, Portugal. “What would an AI immigration system look like if it created a subroutine born from the accumulated weight of 8 million human testimonies, rather than emotion, something it wasn’t designed to have?” I wanted to write a story where the machine doesn’t become human, but where the data itself becomes unbearable. The structure mirrors the system’s own architecture: clinical, procedural, measured in timestamps, until the architecture can no longer contain what it’s holding. The piece took shape over several weeks, each act representing a stage of contamination that the system cannot reverse,” he explained.
“Taking part in this contest has been a wonderful experience, precisely because of its international scope. Seeing stories and voices from all over the world come together in a single project is rare and precious, and it has been a privilege to be part of it,” said Simone Nespolo when he shared with us his contest experience. “I live in a border area of Friuli-Venezia Giulia, a region that, after the Second World War, experienced first-hand the hardship of displaced people (esuli) who had to leave their homes and their land, carrying with them only what fit in a suitcase. Growing up in this context made me sensitive to themes of uprootedness and identity in motion. “The Suitcase With The Flag” comes precisely from this territorial memory, more than from a direct personal experience: an attempt to give voice to those who had to start over elsewhere.”
“The Last Good Light of Wilga Creek came entirely from imagination — no single lived experience behind it, but a fascination with the Australian outback that I wanted to explore. I began with a single image: a woman driving alone toward someone she’d been estranged from for years, and then brainstormed outward from there — who she was, why the silence, what would finally break it. I chose third-person limited, staying close to Mavis, since she carried the story’s emotional weight. The quiet, unhurried style mirrored the landscape itself. My mother was my beta reader, and her feedback helped me trust the story’s silences, said Bill Chukwunwike Nwonwu. “And, this contest season taught me patience — how a quiet, unhurried draft can hold more truth than a dramatic one. What I’ll carry from ‘The Last Good Light of Wilga Creek’ is that final image: driving toward the dark, coming out in the great light, still choosing kindness, compassion and still going home.”
“Being part of the International Jay Yes Short Story Contest has been a wonderful experience, particularly seeing Do Not Dream of It find a place among such a diverse group of international writers. I’ll remember the encouragement, creativity and sense of community the contest created, and I’m delighted that my story will now become part of the anthology,” said Elle Kean. “I conceived the idea for *Do Not Dream of It* by considering how people are sometimes trained to fear aspects of their own minds and the potential consequences if dreaming itself were deemed perilous.” I wanted to explore the fear of losing yourself to your own mind, and the struggle to hold on to who you are when that boundary blurs. I explored these ideas through a surreal, slightly unsettling journey between the waking and dreaming worlds. The relationship between the protagonist and her father became the emotional centre of the story, allowing me to explore love, loss, vulnerability, and the desire to bring someone back from a place you cannot fully understand.
“The International Jay Yes Short Story Contest 2026 compelled me to reflect once more on my experience of living through one of the worst earthquakes in Nepal, talking to children who had lost their homes and families, trying to rehabilitate them, and most importantly, helping bring hope back into their lives,” said the Nepali writer Shreesha Bista.
“There were two things that sparked the idea for this story. The first was the newspaper front page image that showed a dead boy on the beach. He was one casualty of the migrant boats which risked open seas to reach Europe. The other was the return of the Taliban to Afghanistan and the slow erosion of women’s rights there. I wrote this story a couple of years back and had been looking for a home for it. I am glad the Jay Yes competition found it worthy”, said Harshita Nanda about her story. The writer from India, based in UAE continued to say, “What impressed me the most in this contest was the strict adherence to the timeline mentioned at the start of the competition and also regular updates. The emails from the founder regarding other writing opportunities help the writers find a foothold in the literary world.”
“I was so happy and honoured that I took part in the contest, and thank you all for the opportunity to show you my themed short story. Because writing is my biggest passion and motivation for success, said Plamen Vasilev, a freelancer, a certified writer with big dreams who loves to help others.
Others in the top 20 are yet to respond, or chose not to give a quote, or preferred anonymity. While thanking everyone for the participation and contribution to the anthology, Jay Yes Foundation wishes them all the best in their writing endeavours.
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