Nicholas Royle is the author of five short story collections –
Mortality, Ornithology, The Dummy and Other Uncanny Stories, London
Gothic and Manchester Uncanny – and seven novels, most recently
First Novel. He has edited more than two dozen anthologies and is
series editor of Best British Short Stories for Salt, who also
published his White Spines: Confessions of a Book Collector.
Forthcoming is another collection, Paris Fantastique (Confingo
Publishing). In 2009 he founded Nightjar Press, which continues to
publish original short stories as limited-edition chapbooks.
Claire-Louise Bennett is the author of Pond, published by
Fitzcarraldo Editions. She was born in Wiltshire and currently
resides in the west of Ireland.
Neil Campbell is a short story writer, novelist and poet. From
Manchester, England, he has appeared three times in the annual
anthology of Best British Short Stories (2012/2015/2016). He has
published four collections of short fiction, two novels, two poetry
chapbooks and one poetry collection, as well as appearing in
numerous magazines and anthologies.
Crista Ermiya was born in London to a Filipino mother and
Turkish-Cypriot father. Her stories have been published widely in
magazines and anthologies and her story in the present volume comes
from her debut collection The Weather in Kansas published by Red
Squirrel Press. Crista Ermiya is a winner of the Decibel Penguin
Short Story Prize. She lives in Newcastle upon Tyne with her
husband and son.
Stuart Evers is the author of two short story collections, Ten
Stories About Smoking and Your Father Sends His Love, and a novel,
If This is Home. He lives in London with his family.
Trevor Fevin worked for a number of years as a counsellor in the
National Health Service. He was awarded a distinction for his MA in
creative writing at Edge Hill University. His stories have been
shortlisted in competitions with Chroma and Synaesthesia
magazines.
David Gaffney lives in Manchester. He is the author of the novels
Never Never (2008), All The Places I’ve Ever Lived ( 2017) and Out
Of The Dark (2022) plus the flash fiction and short story
collections Sawn-Off Tales (2006), Aromabingo (2007), The Half-Life
of Songs (2010) and More Sawn-Off Tales (2013). His graphic novels
with Dan Berry include The Three Rooms In Valerie’s Head (2018) and
Rivers (2021).
Janice Galloway is the author of three novels and four collections
of short stories. She studied at Glasgow University and has worked
as a teacher. Her awards include: the MIND/Allan Lane Award for The
Trick is to Keep Breathing, the McVitie’s Prize for Foreign Parts,
the EM Forster Award (presented by the American Academy of Arts and
Letters), the Creative Scotland Award, Saltire Scottish Book of the
Year for Clara and the SMIT non-fiction Book of the Year for This
is Not About Me. She has written and presented three radio series
for BBC Scotland (Life as a Man, Imagined Lives and Chopin’s
Scottish Swansong) and works extensively with musicians and visual
artists.
Jessie Greengrass was born in 1982. She studied philosophy in
Cambridge and London, where she now lives with her partner and
child. Her debut short story collection, An Account of the Decline
of the Great Auk, According to One Who Saw It, is published by JM
Originals, an imprint of John Murray.
Kate Hendry is a writer, editor and teacher living in Edinburgh.
Her short stories have been published in Harpers, Mslexia and New
Writing Scotland. She was a runner up in the 2009 Bridport Prize
and has been a recipient of a Scottish Book Trust New Writer’s
Bursary. Her first collection of poems will be published by
HappenStance Press in 2016.
Thomas McMullan is a London-based writer. His work has been
published by Lighthouse, Minor Literature[s], 3:AM Magazine, The
Stockholm Review and The Literateur. He regularly contributes to
the Guardian and is currently seeking representation.
www.thomasmcmullan.com @thomas_mac.
Graham Mort, poet and short fiction writer, is Professor of
Creative Writing and Transcultural Literature at Lancaster
University. He specialises in literature development work and
recent projects have taken him to South Africa, Kurdistan, Vietnam
and China. His first book of stories, Touch (Seren), won the Edge
Hill Prize in 2011 and his latest book of stories, Terroir (Seren),
is currently long-listed for the same prize. A new book of poems,
Black Shiver Moss, will appear from Seren in 2017.
Ian Parkinson was born in Lancashire in 1978 and studied philosophy
at university before working as a civil servant and insurance
clerk. His first novel, The Beginning of the End, was published in
2015.
Tony Peake has contributed to numerous anthologies including
Winter’s Tales, The Penguin Book of Contemporary South African
Short Stories, The Mammoth Book of Gay Short Stories, The Gay Times
Book of Short Stories: New Century New Writing, New Writing 13,
Yes, I Am! Writing by South African Gay Men and Seduction, a themed
anthology which he also edited. He is the author of two novels, A
Summer Tide (1993) and Son to the Father (1995), and a biography,
Derek Jarman (1999). Further details on www.tonypeake.com.
Alex Preston was born in 1979. He is the award-winning author of
three novels and appears regularly on BBC television and radio. He
writes for GQ, Harper’s Bazaar and Town & Country Magazine as well
as for the Observer’s New Review. He teaches Creative Writing at
the University of Kent and regular Guardian Masterclasses. He is
@ahmpreston on Twitter.
Leone Ross is a novelist, short story writer and editor. Her
fiction has been nominated for the Women’s Prize, Goldsmiths Prize,
RSL Ondjaate Prize and Edge Hill Prize, among others, and ‘When We
Went Gallivanting’ won the Manchester Fiction Prize in 2022. She
has taught creative writing for more than 20 years, and worked as a
journalist throughout the 1990s. She is editor of Glimpse, the
first Black British anthology of speculative fiction (Peepal Tree
Press, 2022). Her third novel, This One Sky Day aka Popisho, is
published in paperback by Faber & Faber and Picador USA. In 2023,
she was named as a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.
John Saul grew up in Liverpool. Widely published, his short fiction
has been brought together in three collections with a fourth, The
Book of Joys, due out this year from Confingo Publishing. Work of
his appeared in Best British Short Stories 2016 and as the
contribution from England to Dalkey Archive’s Best European Fiction
2018. Now living in London, he is a member of the European
Literature Network. Website: www.johnsaul.co.uk
Colette Sensier is a prose writer and poet born in Brighton in
1988. She studied English at King’s College, Cambridge, and
Creative Writing at UEA. Her debut poetry collection, Skinless, is
published by Eyewear, and her poetry is also anthologised in The
Salt Book of Younger Poets. She has completed a historical novel
(with the help of mentoring from Bernardine Evaristo during a
Spread the Word mentoring scheme) and a dramatic adaptation of a
Shirley Jackson novel, and is working on new contemporary
prose.
Robert Sheppard is mainly a poet, whose selected poems, History or
Sleep, appears from Shearsman Books, and who has poetry
anthologised in Anthology of Twentieth Century British and Irish
Poetry (OUP) and Reality Street Book of Sonnets, among others. His
short fiction is published as The Only Life (Knives Forks and
Spoons Press), and is found amidst his 2015 autobiographical work,
Words Out of Time, and in several places in his 2016 publication
Unfinish (Veer Publications). He is Professor of Poetry and Poetics
at Edge Hill University, where in 2016 they celebrate ten years of
the Edge Hill Prize.
D. J. Taylor has written twelve novels, including Trespass
(1998) and Derby Day (2011), both long-listed for the Man-Booker
Prize, and, most recently Rock and Roll is Life: The True Story of
the Helium Kids by One Who was There (2018). His non-fiction
includes Orwell: The Life, which won the 2003 Whitbread Prize for
Biography, The Prose Factory: Literary Life in England Since 1918
(2016) and Lost Girls: Love, War and Literature 1939–1951 (2019).
He lives in Norwich with his wife, the novelist Rachel Hore.
Greg Thorpe is a freelance writer, DJ, curator and event producer
in Manchester. He is a graduate of Manchester University and the
Creative Writing MA at Manchester Metropolitan University. He has
written for City Life, Time Out, The Big Issue, Creative Tourist,
Manchester Evening News, Northern Soul, the Liverpool Biennial,
Manchester Art Gallery and Cornerhouse, and has been writer in
residence for Islington Mill and Manchester Central Library. He has
curated and produced events for Manchester International Festival,
the closing of Cornerhouse, the opening of HOME, and the launch of
the Meltdown Festival at Southbank.
Mark Valentine is from Northampton but now lives in Yorkshire. He
is the author of studies of Arthur Machen (1995) and the diplomat
and fantasist Sarban (2010). His short stories are published by the
independent imprints Tartarus Press (UK), The Swan River Press
(Ireland), Sarob Press (France) and Zagava (Germany). He also
writes essays on book-collecting and forgotten authors.
If the latest iteration of Salt’s Best British Short Stories
collection is anything to go by then the genre remains in safe
hands. Whether safety is what we ought to demand of our writers,
particularly in this traditionally experimental genre, is another
question entirely. This is not to say that the collection is devoid
of innovation: Ian Parkinson’s “A Belgian Story” is at once an
allegory for contemporary debates surrounding immigration and the
paranoid account of a deluded individual, and its success lies in
the ambiguous tension between the two. John Saul’s “Song of the
River” exhibits a Joycean fascination with the intersection between
stories and songs.
*Times Literary Supplement*
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