The Bridport results for this year are now on their website.
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Interestingly professional-looking winners in the short story - Graham Mort wins, Toby Litt a supplementary, no less. And ex-WWer Vanessa Gebbie is second, which is brilliant - congrats Vanessa!

Emma

Yes, I wondered if that was one of the nessies!! Didn't like to say in case i was wrong. In which case, massive congratulations to nessie if she's still around!
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From the Judge's Report:

http://www.bridportprize.org.uk/chevalierstoryreport.htm

If only writers could be a little, well, jollier about it! Sorely missing from the entries was humour, with the honourable exceptions of "Ghost Lights," which made me laugh aloud, and "The Fish," with its surreal subject matter and bravura style (there is only one full-stop, at the end of the story). Otherwise, reading the stories made me more and more depressed. While I'm not in a position to chastise - I myself am not known for many laughs in my books - I would like to make a plea to future writers: humour is good! Not only that, but a funny story is so much harder to write than a sad one. Let it be a challenge to us all. I will if you will.

Now there's a challenge I can't refuse.

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Yes, well done Vanessa Gebbie!

Sorely missing from the entries was humour,

Yes, I remember thinking that the time I judged a comp - terrific stuff, but cor, it was gloomy. Occasional evidence of humourousness along the way, but definitely no comedy. I wondered then if it was that history brings out the gloom in us - not to treat it as nasty, brutish and short somehow means you're straying into Cartland territory, or something. But it's obviously chronic across the whole range of styles.

I do think there's a tendency to regard sad/gloomy/tragic as in some way more important than funny. I remember at an early Tales of the Decongested evening, where seven out of the eight stories were about Death - I kid you not - that in some it was a kind of cheap profundity, an easy way of seeming heavyweight.

Or is it just that as Tracey says, funny's harder to do well?

Emma

Congratulations to Vanessa!

Sarah

Or is it just that as Tracey says, funny's harder to do well?

I would say it is a different writing muscle, and if unused it atrophies. However, several WW members have related sad stories of the humorous passages of their mss being cut by their editors, so I think it may also be the fault of the industry - editors just don't have a sense of humour these days.
I have to admit I take humour very seriously and would never cut it from my mss - unless, of course, it just wasn't funny.

Is there a longlist this year? And are there any WWers lurking on it?
C

Thought I'd said, but evidently didn't, commiserations to everyone who entered and didn't get anywhere. If it's any comfort, they get 4-5,000 entries in each of the two categories, so the competition's ferocious...

Emma

Graham Mort was my MA tutor. I was always under the impression that Bridport was for aspiring, rather than professional, writers.

Many congratulations to Vanessa!

Rosy

Bridport's open, and anymous, so anyone can enter. You could say it makes it a stronger comp. to have it so, than to restrict it in some way.

Emma

That's interesting to know. Dunno why I made that assumption, anyway.

I did think about entering this year, but don't have any decent stories that aren't hors de combat already, only ones I know aren't good enough.

Interesting what a high proportion now have some kind of CW-teaching link. I don't think that was so universal in my batch...

Emma

Well done Nessie! Humour IS much harder to do than sad. I wish I was better at it.