Scott Prize winners and Edge Hill Short Story Prize shortlist

May is clearly a bumper month for short story collection news! First, congratulations to A J Ashworth, Jon Pinnock and Cassandra Parkin, the three winners of this year's Salt Publishing Scott Prize for debut short story collections. Their collections will be published in November, the UK's National Short Story Week. We look forward to our review copies!

And congratulations too to Short Review author Tom Vowler, whose collection, The Method, has been shortlisted for the Edge Hill Short Story Prize, alongside collections from Helen Simpson, Polly Samson,Graham Mort and Michele Roberts.Winners announced in July, good luck to all!

Short Story Month 2011: The Collection Giveaway Project

I was thrilled to receive an email from Erika Dreifus of the Fiction Writers' Review, about this new intiative for Short Story Month 2011, in May. Here's what it's all about: 

Inspired last year by the Emerging Writers Network—who inaugurated May as Short Story Month three years ago—and the Big Poetry Giveaway for National Poetry Month, Fiction Writers Review is excited to launch our second year of The Collection Giveaway Project: a community effort by lit bloggers to raise attention for short story collections. Warm thanks to FWR Contributing Editor Erika Dreifus, who suggested FWR as a home for this project last year and will not only be participating on her own blog, but will also be helping FWR run the project right here.

To participate in Short Story Month 2011: The Collection Giveaway Project , here’s what to do:

(1) Post an entry on your blog recommending a recently published short story collection (or two, or three).
The post can be long or short, a review or merely a rave. The one requirement is that you, the blogger, have read and loved the book(s) in question.
(2) Offer a copy of the book (or each book) as a giveaway to one lucky person who comments on your blog.
You can choose the winner through a drawing, or by the wittiness of his/her remarks, or by whatever criteria you choose.

NOTE for blogger-authors: You can absolutely give away a copy of your own collection—but in an effort to keep this as much about community as publicity, please also offer to give away a second book that isn’t one of yours.

(3) Announce the winner(s) on May 31, 2011, and arrange to send out copies of any books you are giving away.
If you’re participating, drop Erika an email at erika [at] fictionwritersreview.com to let us know. We’ll add you to the list of participating blogs/sites and link to you from this frequently updated page on our site.
Check back May 1 for the official launch, but we’ll update the list throughout May!

Edge Hill Prize 2011 Longlist Announced

The longlist has just been announced for Edge Hill University's Short Story Prize 2011. This is the fifth year of the prize,  the UK's only literary award for a published collection of stories - won last year by Jeremy Dyson, who is one of this year's judges, together with Stuart Maconie and Marcus Gipps. You can read our interview with prize organiser Ailsa Cox here. The shortlist will be unveiled in May.

Here is this year's longlist, with links to those we've reviewed, so you can check out some of what the fuss is all about!:

• Martin Bax - Memoirs of a Gone World (Salt Publishing). 
• Alan Beard - You Don't Have to Say (Tindal Street Press). review coming soon
• Peter Bromley - Sky Light and Other Stories (Biscuit).
• Jo Cannon - Insignificant Gestures (Pewter Rose Press).
• Roshi Fernando - Homesick (Impress Books).
• David Gaffney - The Half-life of Songs (Salt Publishing).
• Vanessa Gebbie - Storm Warning, Echoes of Conflict (Salt Publishing). review coming soon
• James Kelman - If it is Your Life (Penguin).
• Andre Mangeot - True North (Salt Publishing). review coming soon
• Jay Merill - God of the Pigeons (Salt Publishing). 
• Magnus Mills - Screwtop Thompson (Bloomsbury). 
• Graham Mort - Touch (Seren).
• Nik Perring - Not So Perfect (Roast Books).
• Susannah Rickards - Hot Kitchen Snow (Salt Publishing). review coming soon
• Michele Roberts - Mud, Stories and Sex and Love (Virago).
• Polly Samson - Perfect Lives (Virago). review coming soon
• Helen Simpson - Inflight Entertainment (Random House). 
• Fiona Thackeray - The Secret's in the Folding (Pewter Rose Press).
• Tom Vowler - The Method and Other Stories (Salt Publishing). 
• Susie Wild - The Art of Contraception (Parthian).

Scott Prize shortlist announced

The shortlist for Salt Publishing's 2011 Scott Prize for unpublished debut short story collections has been announced. Says Salt: "This prize forms part of Salt’s commitment to the short story and to our mission to discover and nurture new talent from around the English-speaking world." The shortlist is:


Adam Prince (Knoxville, US): The Beautiful Wishes of Ugly Men
Andrea Ashworth (Lancashire, UK): Somewhere Else, or Even Here
Cassandra Parkin (E. Yorks, UK): New World Fairy Tales
Guy Ware (London, UK): Witness Protection
John Haggerty (CA, US): The Other Half of Graceland
Jonathan Pinnock (St Albans, UK): Dot (.), Dash (-)
Julie Mayhew (Herts, UK): A Little Death
Michael Downs (Baltimore, US): The Greatest Show
Nicole Reid (IN, US): If You Must Know
Virginia Gilbert (Dublin, Ireland): Abroad

Many congratulations to all the shortlisted authors! Winners will be announced in April and The Short Review looks forward to reviewing the winning collections when they are published.

Best British Short Stories 2012 Wants to Hear From You

(cross-posted with TaniaWrites)


I mentioned a while ago on my personal blog that Best British Short Stories is back, resurrected by my publisher, Salt Publishing, and edited by Nicholas Royle. He has just finalised the list of stories for the first edition, the 2011 edition, which will be published in April 2011 (see the list here - I'm delighted that it includes No Angel by Bernie McGill, which I chose as 2nd prize winner in the Sean O'Faolain competition), quite a mammoth task, he is to be applauded! And now he wants to know what British short story writers are up to this year.

He told me he wants short stories published "anywhere, could be in American publications or wherever. And not just literary mags – anthologies, newspapers, online etc." But before you get excited and start firing off your beautiful publications to him, he cautions: "People need to be selective, ie not like I was when sending to Giles Gordon & David Hughes for Best Short Stories, way back." If all of us bombard him with everything we have published this year, he will be swamped. So wait, think about it, be choosy. And check out the anthologies Nicholas has already edited (to start with, read The Short Review's review of '68: New Stories from Children of the Revolution).

And then, when you're ready, send them to:

n.royle@mmu.ac.uk or hard copies to Nicholas Royle at Manchester Writing School, Geoffrey Manton Building, MMU, Rosamond St West, Manchester M15 6LL

Short Review Author Among Story Prize finalists

The $20,000 Story Prize, run by Larry Dark (who Sarah Salway interviewed for us here), is an very prestigious annual book award for short story collections written in English and published in the U.S. during a calendar year. It was won last year by Wells Tower for his collection, Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned.

The Prize has just announced its three finalists for 2010: Short Review author Suzanne Rivecca for her collection, Death is Not An Option, Yiyun Li for Gold Boy, Emerald Girl, and Anthony Doerr for Memory Wall. Congratulations to all! Winner announced March 3rd.

But that's not all - following the announcement of the finalists, Larry today posted the longlist, and this is an excellent place if you're looking for new short story collections to check out! It's a great resource for us, too - we have reviews in the works of half the collections on the list, will be checking out the other half. Congratulations to all!

National Short Story Day in the UK

You don't need to be in the UK to celebrate the first National Short Story Day, today, December 21st, the shortest day of the year! Instead of going on again and again about how wonderful short stories are (which we tend to do anyway, monthly...), here is a Twitter widget thingy which tells you who is recommending what for NSSD - you don't need to be registered on Twitter to click the links. Happy reading!