Frank lifts his camera and snaps it a few times at Stella. She isn’t sure if he’s seriously taking photographs, or if he’s performing for Blue.

In Tinderloin and Snakebite your protagonists find their animal companions to be more dependable than the humans they invest in. Is this a reflection of their age or are adult relationships just as unreliable? Blue 4eva is about a 12-year old girl who is adjusting to her mother’s remarriage, and the new blended family that comes with it. It’s a story about sexuality, identity, and trying to fit in. What inspired you to write it? Records the default button state of the corresponding category & the status of CCPA. It works only in coordination with the primary cookie. Many of your characters are self-sufficient with absent or complicated relationships with their mothers. Is there an expectation on girls to be independent where boys get more support? SELECTED FOR STYLIST'S BOOKS YOU CAN'T MISS IN 2022 - 'A MUST READ' 'An exhilarating debut' GUARDIANThis story was included in your debut collection, Send Nudes. How did publishing earlier this year impact you as an author? The door opens, and there’s Blue, dressed in a pair of fluorescent orange bikini bottoms and a white crop top, her dark nipples just visible underneath. One of her hands is full of cherries, the other full of stones. Saba Sams wins 17th BBC National Short Story Award for Debut Story Celebrating the Power and Agency of Youth

I still remember where I was when I first encountered a Saba Sams story' NICOLE FLATTERY 'I fell for this stunning collection with a rare, consuming passion' MEGAN NOLAN ____________________________________________________________ Speirs said the judges loved the “freshness and the spirit in the writing” and felt the story “brilliantly captures the nuances of blended family dynamics, the jealousies and stresses, the efforts and the rejections”. Content Warnings: Sexual content, Adult/minor relationship, Abortion, Alcohol, Body shaming, Drug use, Pregnancy, Sexual assault, Toxic friendship, and Miscarriage. Were there any particular challenges with this story that you felt you had to overcome, or battle as a writer?There’s no urgency here, no pang of desire or hunger, nobody even needs anything. In “Snakebite,” our protagonist Meg has a job at a bar, not because she needs the money she tells us but because she needs something to fill her time. She also goes to university, not because she wants to but because she doesn’t know what else to do. At one point in the story, she gives a man a blow job in a portable toilet, not because she wants to but because he’s offering cocaine in exchange. The cocaine isn’t something she really wants either, but her friend asked her to, so why not, I guess. I don’t know if I feel that the character in that story is empowered by sending her nude. Certainly I think there is a thrill in her sense of being seen, and that the act of taking the photo allows her to interact with her body in a way that she finds pleasurable. Neither do I feel that she is being exploited, though it’s always true that women’s desires are partly shaped by the misogynistic culture in which we live. It seems near impossible, as a heterosexual woman, to act out a sexual desire without being cornered by the narrow walls of empowerment versus exploitation. Yes, the two exist, but it is more complicated than pitting them against each other as a stark binary. The title story, for me, is about a brief moment of lightness, a rising out of these binds. Jasmine stops. They’re at the bottom of the street by now. The fairy lights have run out and things are a shade darker. Jasmine’s face is mostly covered by her hair, but Stella can see that her mascara is running.

The girls begin to eat. Blue and Jasmine talk about learning to drive, which Jasmine is doing and Blue is avoiding.

Reviews

I’m always thinking about what it looks like to be a young woman: about bodies and power, about friendships and family, about the ways we’re constantly looking to break free,” Sams said. “Blue 4eva engages with sexuality, too, particularly with queerness, in a subtle way that I found interesting to write.” When I was writing Send Nudes a few years later, I returned to the story and started working on it again. I’m always thinking about what it looks like to be a young woman: about bodies and power, about friendships and family, about the ways we’re constantly looking to break free. ’Blue 4eva’ engages with sexuality too, particularly with queerness, in a subtle way that I found interesting to write." We recognised them and laughed with them. We were delighted too, to discover that we had chosen a writer who has already, at 26, created such an exciting body of work that she has published her first short story collection. This award has always sought to reward excellence and dedication to the unique and challenging form of the short story and this year’s winner more than fulfils our ambition.” Sams’ style of writing is almost identical to Rooney’s. In this area, Saba Sams has brought nothing new to the table. But innovation in prose style is not what she is after; it is content in which she has made remarkable strides. She has significantly widened the picture from Rooney’s obsession with bourgeois romance troubles and middle-class professionals moaning of how awful life is whilst professing themselves to be avid Marxists… 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 was identified by Granta publishers in April 2023 as one of twenty under forty-year-olds authors to watch for the future. Sams has already won the 2022 BBC National Short Story Award, and her short stories have been published in well respected literary magazines including the White Review and The stinging Fly. So her short stories clearly have widespread appeal. Blue leans forward, catches Stella’s eye, and winks. Hey bestie, she says. You wanna split the last fig? A seriously impressive debut. Saba Sams digs into the chaos, euphoria and menace of sexual attraction, friendship and family with bravery and wit' CHRIS POWERA 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.