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.

We’re delighted to see that Ben Tufnell’s story ‘An Invocation’, which we featured in our anthology New Ghost Stories IV, has been chosen for inclusion in this year’s Best British Short Stories anthology.

If you’re not familiar with the Best British Short Stories series, it’s an annual collection of new short fiction from both established and new writers, edited by Nicholas Royle for Salt Publishing. This is the second time they’ve picked up one of our stories, and it’s always a pleasure to see our writers have an opportunity to meet more readers through the series.

Ben’s story is still available in New Ghost Stories IV (get your copy here!), and you can find out more about Best British Short Stories 2024 over on Salt’s website.

The first and most important thing to do if you’re planning to submit short stories to a magazine or series publisher is read them first. Pick up a couple of issues, or anthologies, or whatever it is they publish, and read them closely. Work out what they’re trying to do as publishers, and whether what you write is a good match. If so, think about which of your unpublished stories would fit best.

Not only does this save you a lot of time and disappointment (and if you don’t like a publisher’s output, your own work is probably not going to be a good match for them), but it is also a great way to keep inspired and engaged with what’s happening in today’s short fiction world.

To supplement this process, I thought it might be interesting to take a look at some of the short stories that we’ve published recently here at The Fiction Desk, and think about why we chose them, and what they say about us and the kind of stories we publish.

All of the following stories appear in our last-but-one anthology, Houses Borders Ghosts, which contains a mixture of general and genre fiction.

I should make it clear that this list is not a ‘best of’: as publishers, we naturally love all of our (adopted) children equally. Instead, I’ve tried to highlight stories that might best shed a light on our editorial approach.

‘Name’ by Andrew Cochrane

Although many of the stories we publish have a fairly classic plot-driven structure, we do regularly feature pieces that try to do something different: what matters is that they are successful on their own terms, and that they engage the reader.

Andrew Cochrane’s story ‘Name’ is a good example of this: it takes place in a council office, where two new parents are trying to register their baby’s name. The clerk is trying to explain why the (unspecified) name they have chosen is not appropriate. They don’t accept his reasoning. The conversation pushes back and forth, but they are essentially deadlocked for the entire story; when it ends, no progress has been made on either side.

Some readers were thrown by this. (more…)

It’s time to announce the latest winner of the Fiction Desk Writer’s Award.

This award is presented for the best story in each anthology we publish, and is judged by the contributors to that volume.

Time time we had a particularly challenging contest, with a three-way tie between Matt Plass, Jacqueline Gabbitas, and Jo Gatford. To break the tie, we invited our previous winner Zeph Auerbach to cast a deciding vote. He chose Jo Gatford’s story Yellow Rock as the winner, and here’s what he had to say about it:

‘Yellow Rock is superb at conjuring a sense of mystery and longing. Details – including those of the intriguing narrator – always seem just out of reach, and you’re left just with the pure drive and fear of someone working at a dangerous frontier of discovery. It’s a dark, uncanny tale that will stay with me for years to come.’

So thank you to Zeph for helping with the vote, to Jo for her excellent story, and to all of our contributors for the fantastically high standards they set. If you’ve not yet read New Ghost Stories IV, it’s out now and you can get your copy right here. (And watch out for our next anthology, featuring another new story from Jo.)

Our latest anthology, New Ghost Stories IV, is out now.

You can find out more, or order your own copy, right here.

On Friday the BBC announced the shortlist for this year’s National Short Story Award.

There’s a total of five shortlistees, and we’re delighted to see that two of them are Fiction Desk contributors. That’s almost half the list!

The two writers whose work has appeared in our pages are Danny Rhodes and Richard Smyth.

You can find out more about the award over on the BBC’s website. The winners will be announced on 19 October.

Today we’re announcing the latest winner of The Fiction Desk’s Writer’s Award.

The Writer’s Award is presented to the author of the best story in each anthology we publish, as voted for by the contributors themselves. Because who could be better qualified than the people who write the stories?

This time around the award is for the best story in our latest anthology, Houses Borders Ghosts. With nine excellent stories to choose from, including one by a previous award-winner Alastair Chisholm, competition was tough, but in the end the votes gave us a winner.

So it’s congratulations to Zeph Auerbach, who takes home the £100 prize for his story ‘Desynchronisation at Seven Sisters’.

If you’ve not yet read his story, Houses Borders Ghosts is available now in paperback and Kindle editions.

We’re delighted to announce that our new anthology, Houses Borders Ghosts, is due for publication at the end of this month.

Houses Borders Ghosts contains nine new short stories in our usual variety of styles and themes from new and returning authors; our regular readers will be familiar with Alastair Chisholm, Jacki Donnellan, and Kate van der Borgh, and there are some fantastic talents making their first appearance in our pages.

Copies will be available soon in paperback and Kindle editions. You can find out more about the new anthology, or order your own copy, here.

We’re so busy getting our new anthology ready for press that we nearly overlooked our own birthday! This week sees the tenth anniversary of the publication of our first anthology, Various Authors.

In the years since then, we’ve published fourteen volumes, including 149 stories from 108 different authors. And we’ve got plenty more lined up.

So thank you to all of you — readers, contributors, and potential contributors — who have been with us along the way.

(Speaking of our anthologies, watch out for news of our new volume in the next couple of weeks.)

Today we’re announcing the latest winner of the Fiction Desk Writer’s Award. The Writer’s Award is presented to the author of the best story in each of our anthologies, and is voted for by the contributors themselves. The winner receives £100.

Our new anthology, Somewhere This Way, features some very strong stories and the voting was close, but for once we didn’t need a tie break: the clear winner is ‘Exhalation’, by Alastair Chisholm.

Congratulations, Alastair!

Find out more about Somewhere This Way or get your own copy right here.

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