Edge Hill University

21/11/2024 | Press release | Distributed by Public on 21/11/2024 13:20

Exceptional literary talents announced as Edge Hill Short Story Prize finalists

The competition celebrates emerging and established writers, highlighting the diverse voices and exceptional talents of contemporary short story writers from across the UK and Ireland.

The shortlisted collections and their publishers are:

  • Forgetting is How we Survive by David Frankel (Salt)
  • After the Funeral by Tessa Hadley (Jonathan Cape)
  • Encounters with Everyday Madness by Charlie Hill (Roman Books)
  • Monstrous Longing by Abi Hynes (Dahlia Publishing)
  • Parables, Fables, Nightmares by Malachi McIntosh (The Emma Press)
  • Walter Benjamin Stares at the Sea by CD Rose (Melville House Publishing)

A new £1,000 Debut Collection Award will also be presented to one of the shortlisted authors to celebrate the best new voices in short story writing, and a £500 prize will be awarded for the best entry from an Edge Hill University postgraduate creative writing student.

Harriet Hirshman, an Edge Hill alumna who previously interned on the Edge Hill Prize, was twice shortlisted for the student prize and is now Dead Ink publishing manager, will be on the judging panel.

She said: "I want a short story to keep me guessing, yet when it ends make me feel like it couldn't have ended any other way.

"A great collection should feel cohesive and distinct, like sampling an expansive array of delights from a carefully curated platter.

"Each story should be memorable and provocative in its own way."

The Edge Hill Short Story Prize was founded in 2006 by the world's first Professor of Short Fiction, Ailsa Cox, to highlight the intricate artisanship of short story writing and acknowledge the wealth of published collections available. 

Founded in 2006 by the world's first Professor of Short Fiction, Ailsa Cox, the £10,000 prize remains the only national literary award to recognise excellence in a published, single-authored short story collection.

Sarah Schofield, Edge Hill Short Story Prize organiser, said: "Narrowing the longlist of 14 exceptional collections was incredibly difficult for the shortlisting panel. The six titles selected demonstrate a breadth of variety in style and voice.

"Each collection holds stories that resonate with the reading panel members on a personal level. It is a positive year again for small presses, which are well-represented on this list, continuing to keep the short story form in good health and backing new talent."

Past winners of the prize include Sarah Hall, Saba Sams, Kevin Barry, Daisy Johnson, and last year's winner Bernie McGill for her collection This Train is For. Bernie will return as a judge for this year's prize, alongside Harriet and founder of Scratch Books Tom Conaghan.

Bernie said: "Reading stories changes us in subtle and incontrovertible ways. In a world where opinions can appear copper-fastened, where debate is too often polemicised, it seems to me to be a good thing to be reminded that your heart can be moved by fiction; that your mind can be changed.

"We're looking for a collection of stories that will do that, with range and depth and variety and conviction, not once, but over and over again."

Tom is looking for "a nourishing sense of diversity, that 'drunkenness of things being various' (Louis MacNeice)".

"Its individual stories will be rich and exhilarating but together a collection can fold you in more planes than a novel can. We come away from a great collection as if from a magic night out, where you've met everyone, laughed and wept with everyone, danced with everyone."

Find out more about Edge Hill's Department of English and Creative Arts and courses including BA (Hons) Creative Writing and MA Creative Writing.

November 21, 2024