Send Nudes: By the winner of the BBC National Short Story Award 2022

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Sams beat a shortlist dominated by the UK’s most original and imaginative writers, including composer, performer and writer, Kerry Andrew for ‘And The Moon Descends on the Temple That Was’; Professor of Writing at Lancaster University and Betty Trask Award winning novelist, Jenn Ashworth for ‘Flat 19’; thriller writer, Anna Bailey for ‘Long Way to Come For a Sip of Water’ and short story writer and poet, Vanessa Onwuemezi for ‘Green Afternoon’. Saba Sams’ ‘Blue 4eva’ is a triumphant and unnerving portrait of youthful desire and adult failings. The story’s atmosphere is sensual and dangerous but through detailed observations Sams allows each character space to grow and surprise us. The shortlist for this year’s BBC National Short Story Award with Cambridge University shows the best writers of our generation using skill and wit to build worlds that are, like our own, troubled and uncertain.” Dr Bonnie Lander Johnson, Fellow, Lecturer and Director of Studies at Cambridge University. Non mi aspettavo un libro del genere. Lo volevo leggere perché mi aveva colpito la copertina, e mi sono trovata davanti una fantastica raccolta di racconti brevi che mi ha lasciato senza parole.

A schoolgirl daughter of a butcher begins a relationship with a much older man and becomes enamoured, not with him but his aggressive out of control dog Petal, her wanting for flesh reflected in this creature. I still remember where I was when I first encountered a Saba Sams story ... A highly perceptive and intelligent writer' NICOLE FLATTERY Blue gives a twirl. Stella knows that most grown women in that outfit would look crazy, but Blue manages to pull it off. It was the digression into childhood (in a hippy family? and circus?) that the the authors inexperience was obvious, the humour of previous stories felt too mature and there seemed to be no discernible change to writing style despite our protagonists now being children. These stories felt shoe-horned in, perhaps for variation but instead gave me whiplash. Whilst I admire any artist that pushes themselves there’s nothing wrong with writing what you know and where your strengths lie, especially as a debut author. Jasmine rolls her eyes, as she does every time Claire speaks. She’s hoping to go to Sussex, although there’s some doubt around whether she’ll get the grades.As with most short story collections I seem to prefer some stories to others but this one is being rounded up. Stella turns and runs through the house. In her bedroom, Blue’s velour dress is a loop on the floor. On the dresser, the cherry stones have lost their shine. Stella crawls into bed, pulls her knees up beneath her chin, and waits.

Records the default button state of the corresponding category & the status of CCPA. It works only in coordination with the primary cookie. Blue pulls her legs out of the pool and stands up. Stella thinks that if she had a camera, she’d take a photograph of Blue right there, on the edge of the pool like that. Threading between clubs at closing time, pub toilets, drenched music festivals and beach holidays, these unforgettable short stories deftly chart the treacherous terrain of growing up – of intense friendships, of ambivalent mothers, of uneasily blended families, and of learning to truly live in your own body. Send Nudesis full of perceptive, raw accounts from girls growing into women everywhere – in clubs at closing time, on pub toilets, at free spirited music festivals and on make-do beach holidays. What ties the protagonists of each story together is a primal sense of what growing into yourself looks like – often chaotic, sometimes teetering on menacing, and yet always perfectly real. As they battle their own demons and others’ and as they fight for a space to fit into, they reveal some wonderfully incisive universal truths about womanhood. In another story titled ‘Blue 4eva’, three young girls are on vacation with their parents, enjoying the freedom and fun the trip affords them. As the days progress and tensions develop and relieve in different familial settings, each girl makes a choice seemingly without realising the weight it may carry over their holiday.

Stella only knows such details because Frank has told her. Frank is obsessed with his photography equipment. The day before they caught their flight out here, Stella watched him line up his camera, lenses and film canisters in the rectangle of light coming in through his bedroom window before taking a photograph of them on his phone. Stella finishes eating and gathers up the plates to take inside to wash. Something about having Frank around makes her a better daughter, and she can feel it happening. This seems to work the same for Claire too; since she married Frank, she remembers things like how much water Stella’s drunk that day. What do you know about it, small fry? says Blue. She calls the man over. You fancy buying us a drink? she says, when he arrives. Her work calls to mind Eliza Clark, whose 2020 debut novel Boy Parts followed an abrasive young woman who convinces men to pose for explicit photographs, and Megan Nolan, whose 2021 book Acts of Desperation traced a woman’s cruel mistreatment of herself. Which is to say that Sams writes young women characters who are rarely straightforwardly sympathetic. “I didn’t have much in the way of standards,” Gracie, the protagonist of one story, admits. Does that make her a bad person? Not necessarily. Sams presents us with characters about whom we feel at once horrified, and then amused. Her prose, raw and tightly wrought, tests our capacity for compassion.