This week on The ABR Podcast we feature Tara Sharman’s short story ‘Shelling’, which won the 2025 Elizabeth Jolley Short Story Prize. In ‘Shelling’, we meet a woman in flight, driving with the corpse of her dead father stowed in the boot of her car. Stunningly written, savagely honest, this is a story about grief – the grief of losing a father, the grief of losing a childhood, the grief of having to live beyond a state of innocence.

Tara Sharman, at twenty-two years old, becomes the youngest winner of an ABR prize. Here is ‘Shelling’ by Tara Sharman, published in the August issue of ABR.