Cynan Jones, has won the BBC National Short Story Award 201.

The prize of £15,000 was awarded for his lyrical, tension-fuelled story titled ‘The Edge of the Shoal’. One of the judges, writer Jon McGregor, said: "It's an exhilarating, terrifying, and life-affirming read. A stunning achievement, and a deserved winner of the prize."

Cynan Jones is the author of five novels, The Long Dry, Everything I Found on the Beach, The Dig, Bird, Blood, Snow and Cove. His work is widely translated (German, Arabic, Albanian, Italian, French, Hebrew, Dutch, Spanish and Macedonian), and short stories have appeared on BBC Radio 4 and in a number of anthologies and publications including Granta Magazine and The New Yorker.

Selected from over 600 entries, this year’s shortlisted stories included:

• ‘Murmur’ by Will Eaves;
• ‘The Waken’ by Jenni Fagan;
• ‘The Collector’ by Benjamin Markovits;
• ‘If a book is locked there’s probably a good reason for that, don’t you think?’ by Helen Oyeyemi

The stories were broadcasted on BBC Radio 4, and Cynan Jones’s story can be heard here.