Front Row

We announce the winner of the 2018 BBC National Short Story Award and the Young Writers' Award live from West Road Concert Hall, Cambridge and celebrate the power and possibilities of the short story.Judges Sarah Howe and Stig Abell discuss the merits of the entries from the shortlisted authors. In contention for the £15,000 prize are Kerry Andrew, Sarah Hall, Kiare Ladner, Ingrid Persaud and Nell Stevens.Radio 1 presenter Katie Thistleton will also announce the winner of the BBC Young Writers' Award and consider the strengths and emerging themes of the stories with fellow judge Sarah Crossan, the Irish Children's Laureate / Laureate na nÓg.The Student Critics Award is a new scheme mentoring school students in their critical reading, helping this generation to be literary critics in a digital world where everyone can be a reviewer. Poet Dean Atta has been workshopping in a school and describes his work with the young people he met. The BBC National Short Story Award is presented in conjunction with Cambridge University and First Story. Presenter : John Wilson Producer : Dymphna Flynn.

Sarah Perry discusses Melmoth, her eagerly awaited novel after her award-winning The Essex Serpent. Her new novel is about an English translator who, hiding from her past in Prague, uncovers the legend of Melmoth – a woman in black who wanders the world bearing witness to humanity’s worst crimes.BBC1’s new Sunday night drama is a television adaptation of Helen Fitzgerald’s novel The Cry, in which the abduction of a baby leads to the psychological disintegration of a young woman. Emma Bullimore reviews The Cry and considers why child abduction or disappearance is such a recurring theme in contemporary television drama, with series such as Missing, Kiri and Save Me. What is ‘cultural first aid’? And why is it so important to save heritage in the face of natural disaster, fire, flood and conflict emergencies? Biovanni Boccardi of UNESCO alongside Aparna Tandon and Jose Luiz Pedersoli from ICCROM join Samira to discuss, and also to look at how cultural first aid is being used to help the National Museum of Brazil after the recent devastating fire.Presenter: Samira Ahmed Producer: Kate Bullivant

After being appointed director of last year’s opening event for Hull’s year as City of Culture, award-winning and Hull-born filmmaker Sean McAllister decided to make a documentary looking at the impact of the City of Culture on Hullensians by following the work of one man to set up a hip-hop project for disadvantaged kids. He discusses the result, A Northern Soul, and explains his current efforts to challenge the film’s certification.Jamaican-born Poet Tanya Shirley is one of the Hull 18, a selection of poets who have been commissioned to create new work to be premiered in Hull during the Contains Strong Language festival. She joins Jeremy Poynting, founder of Peepal Tree Press, the largest, worldwide publisher of Caribbean and Black British writing to discuss the rise of Caribbean literature.The artist Sean Scully is famous for his distinctively striped oil paintings. As he opens the first exhibition of his sculpture and paintings in the UK, he talks about his love of stripes, his move into sculpture, and why Van Gogh’s painting of his wooden chair had such a profound impact on him. At last year’s Contains Strong Language festival, poet Vicky Foster, joined Front Row to read out some of the poems written by the people of Humberside about places special to them in the region. She returns to Front Row to read a new work that she’s written, Bathwater, about her experiences of living with violence.Presenter: John Wilson Producer: Ekene Akalawu

In Theatr Clywd’s new production of William Golding’s classic novel Lord of the Flies, the group of schoolboys stranded on a remote island have all been reimagined as girls. Critic Gary Raymond reviews.Forty playwrights and actors have accused National Theatre Wales of favouring English artists and companies over Welsh ones. In an open letter on the Wales Arts Review website, the Welsh artists also claim that the company is staging too few productions and say that non-Welsh artists and companies should only be engaged to support Welsh or Wales-based artists. Gary Raymond, editor of the Wales Arts Review, and Kully Thiarai, Artistic Director of National Theatre Wales, discuss the issues.From John Cage’s controversial composition 4’33”, a three-act movement where no sound is made, to the Rothko Chapel in Texas, a place for contemplation housing 14 of the artist’s large, dark paintings, silence has had a significant place in culture. Actor and director Simon McBurney, conductor Jeremy Summerly, and art critic Charlotte Mullins consider the use and importance of silence in theatre, music and art.Berta Isla is the latest novel by Javier Marías, Spain's most celebrated contemporary writer. Critic Alex Clark explains its place in the context of the author's body of work.Presenter: Janina Ramirez Producer: Hannah Robins

Tim Brooke-Taylor, Graeme Garden and Bill Oddie - The Goodies - join Samira to look back at their 1970s cult comedy series. As a complete box set of every episode is released, they reflect on their comedy writing that tackled police brutality, redefined comedy music and introduced television audiences to the little-known Lancastrian martial-art Ecky Thump. This week marks the centenary of the first performance of Gustav Holst's hugely popular orchestral suite The Planets. Composer and pianist David Owen Norris explains our enduring fascination with this work, and composer Samuel Bordoli talks about about his Planets 2018 project which commissioned eight composers to write new work inspired by current planetary science.Grime artist, poet and playwright Debris Stevenson explains how her coming-of-age theatre piece, Poet in Da Corner, sets the story of her own life growing up in a Mormon family in East London to the tracks of Dizzee Rascal’s seminal album Boy in Da Corner.Presenter Samira Ahmed Producer Edwina Pitman

Oceania at the Royal Academy is the first ever major exhibition in the UK of art from the Pacific. It is very ambitious, showing 200 works from across that vast ocean, from Hawaii to New Zealand, New Guinea to Easter Island. It spans time, too, the earliest piece being about 500 years old, the latest completed last year. A Hawaiian writer, Vanessa Lee Miller, and a western maritime historian, Robert Blyth, assess the exhibition.As the former Britpop band Suede release their eighth studio album, songwriter and lead singer Brett Anderson and bassist Mat Osman discuss The Blue Hour and their exploration of new sounds, including Brett’s own field recordings and the spoken word, as well as working with the City of Prague Philharmonic Orchestra.How do crime writers gain knowledge of the police to inform their writing? John speaks to Peter James, author of the Detective Superintendent Roy Grace series of novels, and to crime writer Clare Mackintosh, who worked in the police force for 12 years before becoming an author.Presenter: John Wilson Producer: Julian May

Cary Fukanaga, recently announced director of the next James Bond film, discusses his new Netflix series Maniac. The show explores the minds of two strangers, played by Emma Stone and Jonah Hill, who take part in a mysterious drug trial in the hope of changing their lives for the better.The Royal Opera House has unveiled the results of its £50m, two-and-a-half-year Open Up project. For the first time it will be open to the public daily, with a new programme of free and ticketed events. Royal Opera House CEO Alex Beard explains what’s new and improved about the Covent Garden building.'In one section he’s polishing a scaffolding pole in the most provocative way imaginable' is how director Jacqui Morris describes the previously unseen footage of Rudolph Nureyev she has uncovered. Along with her brother David, the pair have created a new documentary film about the legendary ballet dancer's life through this new archival footage, his own memoirs and a newly-commissioned interpretive dance.Presenter Stig Abell Producer Ben Mitchell

New documentary Matangi/Maya/MIA about the political rapper MIA, uses self-filmed archive footage of the outspoken and ‘controversial’ Sri Lankan immigrant artist who took up the Tamil cause. So how does the film by director and friend Stephen Loveridge help us understand her life and music? Journalist Kieran Yates reviews.The Man Booker Prize 2018 shortlist of six books has just been announced and features two debuts, the youngest ever writer to make the list, a novel in verse and four women authors. Toby Lichtig of the Times Literary Supplement and critic Arifa Akbar give their thoughts on a list which includes some notable omissions - Sally Rooney and Michael Ondaatje for example.Nell Stevens is the final shortlisted writer for this year’s National Short Story Award. She joins Kirsty to talk about The Minutes, her darkly funny and mysterious tale which follows a group of students captivated by an enigmatic stranger as they protest against the demolition and gentrification taking place in their neighbourhood.Roy Williams pays tribute to fellow playwright Stephen Jeffreys, who has died aged 68. He is best-known for writing The Libertine, about the hedonistic Restoration poet and courtier - the Earl of Rochester. Jeffreys also long championed the work of young, new dramatists, including Roy, offering them support and advice.Presenter: Kirsty Lang Producer: Harry Parker

Eileen Atkins talks about her latest stage role in Florian Zeller’s The Height of the Storm, a play about a couple who have been in love for 50 years. The actress, who began her career in the 1950s explains the challenges of Zeller’s writing and her preference for new theatre. 10 years since the collapse of Lehman Brothers, John Kampfner, co-founder of the Creative Industries Federation, and arts journalist Jo Caird discuss the impact of the financial crisis on the arts.Today it was announced that Denis Norden has died. His long career as a comedy writer and performer spanned radio sitcoms in the late 1940s , Hollywood films, and the hugely successful television out-takes show It’ll be Alright on the Night. Dick Fiddy, Archive TV Programmer at the BFI explains his significance.Ingrid Persaud has been shortlisted for the BBC National Short Story Award with The Sweet Sop. She explains what inspired her story which explores the relationship between a father and his estranged son. Set in Trinidad and told in a distinctively Caribbean voice, it deals with themes of masculinity, death and…chocolate. Presenter: Samira Ahmed Producer: Hannah Robins

Director Lenny Abrahamson on his film adaption of Sarah Waters’ novel The Little Stranger, a ghost story set in a dilapidated English manor in the 1940s. Abrahamson, who was Oscar nominated for his previous film Room, explains the how it is more than just a ghost story and talks about the challenges of adapting an unreliable narrator from the book onto screen.As the days get shorter and the light starts to fade, three artists discuss the appeal of darkness and how they use it as a source for their creativity. Artist Sam Winston and photographer Eva Vermandel spend long hours in complete darkness to develop or create their artworks, while TV editor Paulo Pandolpho, whose work includes the recent dramas The Split, Trust Me and Apple Tree Yard, considers the attraction of spending months at a time in a darkened editing suite. Kiare Ladner has been shortlisted for the BBC National Short Story Award with Van Rensburg’s Card. She discusses her story which is set in South Africa and is about a woman in middle age dealing with loneliness following the death of her husband and her daughter’s move to Canada. The story is broadcast on Radio 4 at 3.30pm on Tuesday and the winner of the BBC NSSA is announced on Front Row on 2 October.Presenter : John Wilson Producer : Dymphna Flynn