The BBC Short Story Award turned international this year (for one year only), inviting submissions from across the globe to vie for the £15,000 prize.

“This year the BBC Short Story Award has gone global,” said Radio 4 controller Gwyneth Williams. “We have stories from Australia, America, the Balkans, Ireland, the UK and South Africa.”

Then ten shortlisted stories were all broadcast on Radio 4 and for a limited time you can listen to them all here.

The winner was Bulgarian author Miroslav Penkov with his story, ‘East of the West’.

The runner up, South African Henrietta Rose-Innes’ story, ‘Sanctuary’ traces a woman’s journey back to a childhood haunt in the South African bush.

Other finalists include Deborah Levy (who has been shortlisted for the Booker Prize). Read about her impetus for writing the story, Black Vodka at The Huffington Post,  along with an extract.

MJ Hyland’s story, Even Pretty Eyes Commit Crimes, is in the current issue of Granta and centers on a young man who reconsiders his relationship with his father when he notices patterns resurfacing.

Lucy Caldwell’s story, Escape Routes is set in a besieged Belfast at the turn of the 20th century. Caldwell explains the catalyst to writing the story was reading ‘a heartfelt, luminous piece in the Observer by the playwright Lucy Prebble  about her childhood love of computer games, while Krys Lee’s ‘The Goose Father’ tackles loneliness, desire and a pet goose in Seoul.

This year’s judging panel included broadcaster Clive Anderson, novelist Anjali Joseph, writer and Emeritus Professor of Creative Writing at the University of East Anglia, Michèle Roberts, and Editor of Readings, BBC Radio, Di Speirs.

Which are your favourites from the stories you’ve read or listened to?

Photograph: MJ Hyland  by Rory Carnegie in Quill Magazine