The Best British Short Stories - Softcover

Nicholas Royle

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1784630276 ISBN 13: 9781784630270

Publisher: Salt Publishing

Synopsis

Hilary Mantel and Helen Simpson feature in the nation's favourite annual guide to the short story, now in its fifth year ... Best British Short Stories invites you to judge a book by its cover - or more accurately, by its title. This new series aims to reprint the best short stories published in the previous calendar year by British writers, whether based in the UK or elsewhere. The editor's brief is wide ranging, covering anthologies, collections, magazines, newspapers and web sites, looking for the best of the bunch to reprint all in one volume. Authors include Hilary Mantel, Alison Moore, Jenn Ashworth, Helen Simpson, Charles Wilkinson, Rebecca Swirsky, Matthew Sperling, Julianne Pachico, KJ Orr, Bee Lewis, Uschi Gatward, Emma Cleary and Neil Campbell.

About this title

About the Author:

Nicholas Royle was born in Manchester in 1963. He is the author of seven novels, including: Counterparts, Saxophone Dreams, and First Novel, and a short story collection, Mortality. He has edited sixteen anthologies, including A Book of Two Halves and Neonlit: Time Out Book of New Writing. He lives between London and Manchester and teaches creative writing at MMU. Jenn Ashworth's first novel, A Kind of Intimacy, won a Betty Trask Award in 2010. On the publication of her second, Cold Light, she was listed by the BBC's The Culture Show as one of the UK's twelve best new writers. Her third novel, The Friday Gospels, is currently being adapted for television. She teaches creative writing at Lancaster University and is one of the co-founders of Curious Tales, a writer-led performance and publishing collective. Neil Campbell is from Manchester. He has two collections of short stories, Broken Doll and Pictures From Hopper, published by Salt, and two poetry collections, Birds and Bugsworth Diary, published by Knives Forks and Spoons Press, who have also published his short fiction chapbook, Ekphrasis. Recent stories have appeared in Unthology 6, Stockholm Review and Best British Short Stories 2015. A collection of flash fiction, Fog Lane, is forthcoming from Gumbo Press and his first novel, Sky Hooks, is due for publication from Salt in 2016. @neilcambers. Emma Cleary is from Liverpool and taught English and Creative Writing at Staffordshire University. In her critical work, she writes about maps, jazz, and the city in diasporic literature. She lives in Vancouver, BC, where she is working on her first novel. Uschi Gatward was born in east London and lives there now. Her stories have appeared in the Bristol Short Story Prize Anthology Volume Six, Brittle Star, Southword and Structo, and have been performed by Liars' League in London and New York, and at the Wilderness Festival in Oxfordshire. Jonathan Gibbs was born in 1972 and lives in London. His debut novel, Randall, is published by Galley Beggar Press, and was longlisted for the Desmond Elliott Prize 2015. His short fiction has appeared in Lighthouse, The South Circular, Allnighter (Pulp Faction), Gorse and The Best British Short Stories 2014, and has been shortlisted for the White Review Short Story Prize. He blogs at tinycamels.wordpress.com. Jim Hinks is an editor at Comma Press, an independent publisher specialising in short fiction. He is currently reading for a PhD in narrative structure in the short story at Edge Hill University, and writes his own stories in the name of practice-as-research. He is the inventor of MacGuffin, an online jukebox for short stories and poetry in text and audio form. Tamar Hodes was born in Israel in 1961 and has lived in the UK since she was five. For the past thirty years, she has combined teaching English and creative writing in schools, universities and prisons with her own writing. Her novel, Raffy's Shapes, was published by Accent Press in 2006 and she has had many stories on Radio 4 as well as in anthologies and magazines. In January 2015, she was a finalist in Elle's writing competition. She is married with two grown-up children. Bee Lewis was born into a large, Irish family of story-tellers. She grew up in Liverpool and now lives on the south coast, in East Sussex, with her partner and their Irish Setter. She is reading for an MA in Creative Writing and is working on her first novel. She is also working on a short story collection inspired by modern sculpture. Alan McCormick is Writer in Residence at Kingston University's Writing School. His story collection, Dogsbodies and Scumsters, was longlisted for the Edge Hill Prize in 2012. He also writes flash shorts in response to Jonny Voss's pictures. They work together as Scumsters, have been published regularly at 3:AM and keep a blog at www.scumsters.blogspot.co.uk. Hilary Mantel was born in Glossop in 1952. She is the author of ten novels, including Fludd, Beyond Black and Wolf Hall, as well as a collection, Learning to Talk: Short Stories, and a memoir, Giving Up the Ghost. She has won numerous prizes, among them the 2009 Man Booker Prize for Wolf Hall, and in 2006 was made a CBE. Helen Marshall is an author, editor, and doctor of medieval studies. Her debut collection, Hair Side, Flesh Side (ChiZine Publications, 2012), won the 2013 British Fantasy Award for Best Newcomer. Her second collection, Gifts for the One Who Comes After, was released in September 2014. Born and raised in Canada, she lives in Oxford and holds joint Canadian/UK citizenship. Alison Moore's first novel, The Lighthouse, was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize and the National Book Awards (New Writer of the Year), winning the McKitterick Prize. Both The Lighthouse and her second novel, He Wants, were Observer Books of the Year. Her short fiction has been included in Best British Short Stories and Best British Horror anthologies, broadcast on BBC Radio 4 Extra and collected in The Pre-War House and Other Stories. Born in Manchester in 1971, she lives near Nottingham with her husband Dan and son Arthur. K J Orr was born in London. Her short fiction has been broadcast on Radio 4 and published by the Sunday Times, Dublin Review, White Review, Lighthouse and Comma Press, among others. She is Pushcart nominated, and has been shortlisted for awards including the BBC National Short Story Award, the Bridport Prize and the KWS Hilary Mantel International Short Story Prize. Her debut collection, Light Box, will be published in 2016 by Daunt Books. Julianne Pachico was born in Cambridge, grew up in Colombia and now lives in Norwich. Her stories have been published by Lighthouse, NewWriting.net and Daunt Books. She is currently completing a linked collection. Tracey S Rosenberg is a novelist and poet living in Edinburgh. She has a PhD in Victorian literature from the University of Edinburgh and has published a historical novel, The Girl in the Bunker (Cargo Publishing, 2011), set during the final days of the Second World War. Her second poetry collection, The Naming of Cancer, came out in 2014 from Neon Books. Helen Simpson is the author of Four Bare Legs in a Bed (1990), Dear George (1995) and Hey Yeah Right Get a Life (2000). In 1991 she was chosen as the Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year and won the Somerset Maugham Award. In 1993 she was chosen as one of Granta's twenty Best of Young British Novelists. Her most recent collection, Bunch of Fives, was published in 2012. She lives in London. Matthew Sperling has had stories published in 3:AM, The Junket, The Literateur and The Short Anthology. He also writes poetry and criticism; his scholarly book, Visionary Philology, appeared from Oxford University Press in 2014, and he regularly writes about art for Apollo magazine. He was born in Kent in 1982, lives in north London and is a Leverhulme Trust Early Career Fellow at the University of Reading. Rebecca Swirsky has published stories in Matter, Ambit, Litro and the Bridport Prize anthology, and placed in competitions including the Fish, Bath, Bristol, Manchester, Sean O'Faolain and Bridport prizes. She was awarded a bursary from the Literary Consultancy and has been mentored by Stella Duffy through a Word Factory apprenticeship. She was awarded the AM Heath Prize for her MA in Writing from Sheffield Hallam University. She contributes art criticism and book reviews to publications including the Observer, Economist and Financial Times. Joanna Walsh has had work published by Granta, Dalkey, Salt, Gorse and others. Her collection, Fractals, was published by 3:AM Press in 2013. Hotel is forthcoming from Bloomsbury, and Vertigo (selected stories) from the Dorothy Project. She reviews books for a number of publications including the Guardian, New Statesman and The Nation. She is fiction editor at 3:AM Magazine, and runs @read_women. She is a member of the London Institute of Pataphysics, and also works as an illustrator. Charles Wilkinson is the author of The Pain Tree and Other Stories (London Magazine Editions) and Ag & Au (Flare-stack Poets). His stories have appeared in Best Short Stories 1990, Best English Short Stories 2, Unthology, Supernatural Tales, Phantom Drift, Shadows & Tall Trees and elsewhere. He is a member of the Tindal Street Fiction Group.

Review:

Nicholas Lezard's paperback choice: Hilary Mantel's fantasia about the assassination of Margaret Thatcher leads this year's collection of familiar and lesser known writers. -- Nicholas Lezard * The Guardian *

About this edition

• Publisher: Salt Publishing
• ISBN 10: 1784630276
• ISBN 13: 9781784630270
• Binding: Paperback