Best British Short Stories 2025 [Minkštas viršelis]

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).

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

Christopher Burns is the author of six novels Snakewrist, The Flint Bed, In the Houses of the West, The Condition of Ice, Dust Raising and A Division of the Light and a short story collection, About the Body. He lives in Whitehaven, West Cumbria.

Linden Hibbert runs a pop-up art gallery in rural Suffolk. She has a PhD in creative writing from UEA, and is currently researching the adaptation of Ovidian myths from poetry to sculpture. Her short stories have been published by the Baltimore Review, and the Madrid Review, among others.

Hannah Hoare is a television producer, director and scriptwriter specialising in natural history programmes. Her short fiction has been published online by The Molotov Cocktail, Flashback Fiction, The Cabinet of Heed and Thin Skin. She lives in Wiltshire, in southern England.

Baret Magarian was born in London, of Armenian origin. He was educated at Durham and London Universities and has published The Fabrications, Melting Point, Mirror and Silhouette and Chattering. He is a lecturer, pianist-composer, amateur painter, guitarist, writer and poet. He has travelled widely and has worked as nude model, translator, musician, interviewer, journalist, book representative, and in PR.

Wyl Menmuir is a novelist and editor based in Cornwall. His bestselling debut novel, The Many (Salt), was longlisted for the 2016 Man Booker Prize. In November 2016, Nightjar Press published a limited-edition chapbook of his story Rounds and in 2017, the National Trust published his story, In Dark Places. He has written for Kneehigh Theatre, Radio 4s Open Book, the Guardian and the Observer, and is a regular contributor to the journal Elementum. He teaches creative writing at Falmouth University and is co-creator of Cornish writing centre The Writers Block.

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.

Okechukwu Nzelus debut novel, The Private Joys of Nnenna Maloney, won a Betty Trask Award and was shortlisted for the Betty Trask Prize, the Desmond Elliott Prize and the Polari First Book Prize. His second novel, Here Again Now, was published in 2022. He is a lecturer in creative writing at Lancaster University.

Simon Okotie is a fiction writer and essayist. He is the author of Whatever Happened to Harold Absalon?, In the Absence of Absalon and After Absalon, an acclaimed trilogy of novels published by Salt. In the Absence of Absalon was longlisted for the 2017 Republic of Consciousness Prize. His work has appeared in FT Weekend and Gorse, and at 3:AM Magazine and The White Review. Two Degrees of Freedom, a short story, is published by Nightjar Press.

CD Rose is the author of Whos Who When Everyone is Someone Else and the editor of The Biographical Dictionary of Literary Failure. His short fiction has appeared in 3:AM, Gorse, Lighthouse and The Lonely Crowd.

Elizabeth Stott was born in Kent and has lived in the north of England for most of her life. Her fiction and poetry has been published in magazines and anthologies, also as a collection of stories Familiar Possessions. Her poetry pamphlet The Undoing was published in 2023 by Maytree Press. Most recently, her stories have appeared in Confingo Magazine and Mslexia and featured at a Liars League spoken-word event.

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.

is the bestselling author of The Godless Boys, Mrs. Hemingway and The Hiding Game. Her novels have won a Jerwood Award, the British Library Hay Festival Prize, and been shortlisted for the Walter Scott Prize, the Dylan Thomas Prize, and the Historical Writers Golden Crown. Her début story collection is This is Why We Cant Have Nice Things, which includes the 2023 BBC National Short Story Prize winner, Comorbidities. Her interests are complicated femininity and transgressive motherhood, especially in the modern workplace. She is an Associate Professor of Creative Writing at the University of East Anglia.