It’s always a pleasure to announce a new winner of the Fiction Desk Writer’s Award.
If you’re not already familiar with the Writer’s Award, it’s presented to the author of the best story in each of our anthologies, as voted for by the contributors themselves. We’re always fortunate with the quality of the stories we publish, and it’s a close competition.
The Award for Inside Voices was particularly tough, with no fewer than two previous winners among the contributors: both Alastair Chisholm (for his story ‘Exhalation’ in Somewhere This Way), and Jo Gatford (who won it for ‘Yellow Rock’ in New Ghost Stories IV). All of the other contributors to Inside Voices were new to us, so it was always going to be an interesting contest.
The stories themselves represent the Fiction Desk’s usual range of literary and supernatural fiction, and were as strong as ever. Here’s a quick recap:
It opens with Jo’s story ‘Inside Voices’, which gave the anthology both its title and a strong start with its story of a couple taking an emotionally tense road trip across the USA. Next up is Alastair’s story ‘Mayflies’, which takes a haunting look at the way people and lives can form into patterns, repeating themselves over and over.
The third story, David Malvina’s ‘Book Burning’, starts off on what feels like familiar territory, before taking things in an unexpected (and unexpectedly moving) direction, while Eva Carson’s ‘The Business at Tradeston’ is a wonderful piece of science-fiction in a classic British style. That’s followed by Lauren O’Donoghue’s ‘Black Hill’, with its superb psychology and characterisation.
The anthology concludes with Ian Critchley’s ‘Ghost Walks’, a story of doubles and relationships and lives gone astray, and finally Tina Morganella’s evocative tale of lockdown, ‘The Loop’.
And the winner?
It’s Tina Morganella, for ‘The Loop’.
Congratulations to Tina, and thank you to all of the contributors, both for their superb stories, and for voting in the award.
And if you’ve not yet read Inside Voices yourself, you can grab your copy here.
