is the author of six short story collections – Mortality, Ornithology, The Dummy and Other Uncanny Stories, London Gothic, Manchester Uncanny and Paris Fantastique – 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 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, which continues to publish original short stories in the form of limited-edition chapbooks. He lives in Manchester and London.E. Abdeni Holman is a British-Lebanese writer and critic. ‘Yair’ was short-listed for the BBC National Short Story Award 2025.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.Lee Ashworth has an MA in Creative Writing from Manchester Metropolitan University, graduating with distinction in 2023. His short fiction has appeared in Confingo, Vigilantia (Chroma Editions), Degenerate Art, aAh!, Idle Ink and Storgy. His story ‘Doppelopolis’ gained a ‘very special mention’ in the Withington Short Story Competition 2024. He has written on film, art and music for the Double Negative, Louder Than War and Film Inquiry, and co-created site-specific contemporary art as half of the Manchester Art Authority for the Head to the Hills Festival, HOME’s Manchester Open and elsewhere.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.Graham Greene was born in 1904. He worked as a journalist and critic and in 1940 became literary editor of the Spectator. He was later employed by the Foreign Office. As well as his many novels, he wrote several collections of short stories, four travel books, six plays, three books of autobiography and four books for children. He was a member of the Order of Merit and a Companion of Honour. He died in April 1991.Vicky Grut’s short stories have appeared in new writing anthologies published by Picador, Granta, Duckworths, Serpent’s Tail and Bloomsbury. Her non-fiction essay ‘Into the Valley’ was mentioned in Best American Essays, 2013. Her short story collection, Live Show, Drink Included, was published by Holland Park Press in 2018. She is currently working on a creative non-fiction book that follows her Swedish grandmother from Paris and Stockholm in the 1920s, to Bangkok in the 1930s and Stalin’s Moscow in the winter of 1940.Livi Michael is an award-winning writer of books for adults, young adults and children. Her short stories have been widely published in various places including Granta, The Lonely Crowd and the Manchester Review. Her play, Singers Not Sinners was performed in Oldham in 2022. She has taught creative writing in various universities and was Programme Leader of the MA in Publishing at Manchester Metropolitan University.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.Annemarie Neary was born in Northern Ireland and lives in London. She is the author of three novels. Her short stories have been widely published in the UK, Ireland and the US, most recently in New Ohio Review, Westchester Review, Argyle, and Bangalore Review. She has won prizes for short fiction, including the Columbia Journal, Bryan MacMahon and Michael McLaverty short story awards. Her website is at www.annemarieneary.co.uk and she is @anniemaenearly on Instagram.Yoel Noorali is the author of the short story collection The Kingdom (Book Works, 2025). His essays have appeared in the Observer, Financial Times and Esquire. He is currently at work on two books: a memoir, for Bloomsbury, and a novel.Richard Phoenix is an artist integrating painting, writing, music and facilitation. He lives in Hastings and works on the south coast and in London.Ray Robinson was born in North Yorkshire. His debut novel, Electricity, was shortlisted for the James Tait Black Memorial Prize and the Authors’ Club Best First Novel Award; its screen adaptation won Best Screenplay at the National Film Awards. His other novels include Forgetting Zoë, winner of the Jerwood Fiction Uncovered Prize, and The Mating Habits of Stags, which was shortlisted for the Portico Prize and adapted from his Bafta-nominated short film Edith. His latest novel is Super 8 Dream.David Rudkin was born in 1936 of Irish and English parentage. His first play, Afore Night Come, written while he was reading Classics at Oxford, was premiered by the Royal Shakespeare Company in 1962. His seven decades of writing range across theatre, cinema, television, radio and opera. His 1974 television drama, Penda’s Fen, was directed by Alan Clarke. He has translated plays by Aeschylus, Euripides, Ibsen and Genet from their original languages for stage and radio. Awakening, his opera (with composer Param Vir) on the Buddha, was staged in 2026 by Theater Bonn. The scripts of his original radio dramas The Haunting of Mahler and Macedonia will be published by Tenement Press in December 2026.Sara Sherwood is a writer based in Leeds, West Yorkshire. Her short stories have been featured in Dear Damsels’ anthology Let Me Know When You’re Home: Stories of Female Friendship and Test Signal: Northern Anthology of New Writing published by Dead Ink and Bloomsbury. Her short story ‘Likes’ was also Highly Commended in the Bridport Prize in 2018. She has an MA in Creative Writing from the Manchester Writing School and teaches creative writing workshops in West Yorkshire. Twitter: @sarasherwood. Instagram: @sarasherwoodKaren Stevens’ short fiction has appeared in Fish Anthology 2022 (Fish Publishing) and the Big Issue. She put together Writing a First Novel: Reflections on the Journey for Palgrave Macmillan in 2014, and the anthology she edited with Jonathan Taylor, High Spirits: A Round of Drinking Stories (Valley Press), won the Saboteur Award for Best Anthology in 2019. She is Senior Lecturer in Creative Writing at the University of Chichester and lives in West Sussex. Her debut collection of short stories, Brilliant Blue, was published by Barbican Press in 2025.Lucy Thynne is twenty-five and from London. Her stories have been twice shortlisted for the London Magazine Short Story Prize and her criticism has been published by the TLS and Literary Review. She works on the Books desk at the Telegraph.Charlotte Tierney’s work has been published as part of the Galley Beggars Short Story Prize 2023, as well as by Nightjar Press and in Litro, New England Review, McNeese Review, Denver Quarterly, 3:AM Magazine and others.Tom Vowler is an award-winning novelist and short story writer living in the UK. His debut story collection, The Method, won the Scott Prize and the Edge Hill Readers’ Prize, while his novels What Lies Within and That Dark Remembered Day received critical acclaim. He is an associate lecturer in creative writing at Plymouth University, where he completed his PhD. His second collection of stories, Dazzling the Gods, was published in 2018. More at www.tomvowler.co.ukWill Wiles was born in India in 1978. He is the author of three literary novels, Care of Wooden Floors (Fourth Estate, 2012), The Way Inn (Fourth Estate, 2014), and Plume (Fourth Estate, 2019). Care of Wooden Floors was a Waterstones 11 pick and won a Betty Trask award. He is also the author of fantasy novel The Last Blade Priest, under the name WP Wiles, which was published by Angry Robot in July 2022.Kieran Watt holds a degree in creative writing from Edge Hill University. He lives on the Fylde Coast, Lancashire.
