Best British Short Stories 2023

Nicholas Royle is the author of five short story collections - Mortality, Ornithology, The Dummy, London Gothic and Manchester Uncanny - and seven novels, most recently First Novel. He has edited thirty anthologies and is series editor of Best British Short Stories for Salt, who published his books-about-books, White Spines: Confessions of a Book Collector and Shadow Lines: Searching For the Book Beyond the Shelf. In 2009 he founded Nightjar Press, publishing original short stories in chapbook format. Forthcoming, from Confingo Publishing, is Paris Fantastique, and Finders, Keepers: The Secret Life of Second-hand Books (Salt).


Alinah Azadeh is a British-Iranian writer, visual artist, performer and cultural activist. She has had short stories, poetry and articles published and broadcast. She is the inaugural writer-in-residence at Seven Sisters Country Park and Sussex Heritage Coast, UK, for South Downs National Park, leading 'We See You Now', a decolonial literature and landscape project supported by Arts Council England, which includes the podcast, The Colour of Chalk.


David Bevan is a 2021 graduate of the Manchester Writing School's Creative Writing MA programme. 'The Bull' is one of two stories first published by Nightjar Press.


AK Blakemore is a novelist and poet from London. Her novels include The Manningtree Witches - winner of the Desmond Elliott Prize for a debut novel - and The Glutton. She has published two full-length collections of poetry: Humbert Summer and Fondue. Her work has been widely published and anthologised, appearing in the London Review of Books, Granta and The White Review, among others.


Gabriel Flynn is a writer based in Berlin. He was shortlisted for the White Review Short Story Prize in 2020 and is currently working on his first novel.


Jim Gibson lives in Newstead Village, Nottinghamshire, and is the author of a short story collection, The Bygones (Tangerine Press).


Lydia Gill is a writer, teacher and member of the Esk Valley Camphill Community in the North York Moors. She is a Writers' Block North East alumna, and a Northern Short Story Festival Academy writer. 'The Lowing' is her first published story.


Miles Greenwood is the Lead Curator at the International Slavery Museum in Liverpool and a writer from Stockport. 'Islands' was first published in Extra Teeth while he was living in Glasgow. It was his first short story to be published.


Kerry Hadley-Pryce lives and writes in the Black Country, UK. She has a PhD in creative writing and teaches creative and professional writing at the University of Wolverhampton. She co-edited Writing Under Fire: Poetry and Prose from Ukraine & the Black Country, and has short stories published in Best British Short Stories 2023, Takahe Magazine, Fictive Dream and The Incubator. She has had three novels published by Salt Publishing: The Black Country, Gamble, and God's Country. Lie of the Land is her fourth novel.


Philip Jennings has an MA in Creative Writing from City College, New York and a PhD in English and Creative Writing from Lancaster University. He is a Bridport prize winner and his fiction has appeared in publications as diverse as Evening Standard, Unicorn Productions, Encounter, Penthouse, The Pan Book of Horror Stories, Astounding Little Alien Stories (Barnes and Noble), Panurge, Punch, Iron, and most recently Personal Bests Journal (2021 and 2022). He tutored for many years at City Lit Institute and other adult institutes including Roehampton University.


Sharon Kivland is an artist and writer. She is currently working on the natural form, fables, and the furies. She is also an editor and publisher, the latter under the imprint MA BIBLIOTHEQUE. Her novel Abecedaire was published by Moist Books in July 2022. A chapter from her new book, Almanach, is included in the forthcoming anthology Prototype 5.


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.


Georgina Parfitt lives in Liverpool. Her stories can be found in the Dublin Review, Common, Ambit and elsewhere. She is currently working on a collection of Brighton stories.


Gareth E Rees is an author of fiction and non-fiction. His books include Marshland, The Stone Tide, Car Park Life and Unofficial Britain. His debut short story collection, Terminal Zones, was published by Influx Press in 2022.


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


D. J. Taylor has written thirteen novels, including Trespass (1998) and Derby Day (2011), both of which were long-listed for the Man Booker Prize, and three volumes of short stories, most recently Stewkey Blues (2022) which won the Fiction Award in the 2022 East Anglian Book Awards. His non-fiction includes Orwell: The Life, which won the 2003 Whitbread Prize for Biography, and its successor, Orwell: The New Life (2023). He lives in Norwich with his wife, the novelist Rachel Hore.


Briony Thompson is an East Lothian-based writer specialising in prose fiction. After completing an MLitt at St Andrews University, she pursued a career in policy research. Writing has always been part of that. However, keen to explore her artistic side, she is currently studying for an MA Creative Writing with the Open University. She also works freelance as a copywriter. She grew up in the Scottish Borders and much of her writing is informed by the lives and landscapes of that place.


Matthew Turner is a senior lecturer at Chelsea College of Arts. His essays, reviews and short stories have been published in Financial Times, Architectural Review, Art Review, Frieze, Gorse and elsewhere. In 2021 his first book, Loom, a story about threads and hidden wealth, was published by Gordian Projects.


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.


David Wheldon was born in Moira, Leicestershire, then an active mining village, in 1950. His father was a schoolmaster, his mother a nursing sister. He attended Sidcot, a Quaker school. He was the author of five novels: The Viaduct, The Course of Instruction, A Vocation, At the Quay and Days and Orders, and a short story collection, The Guiltless Bystander. He died in 2021.