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New Short Stories - 4
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The 2010 Willesden Herald International
Short Story Prize Winner and Short List
adjudicated by Richard Peabody
Wena Poon – The Architects
Toby Litt – Veronika and Roger-Roger
Julia Goubert – In the Land of Flies
Willie Davis – Emily Strabnow’s Freckles
Nuala Ní Chonchúir – Letters
Kevin Spaide – Monkey Hat
Carys Davies – Precious
Jonathan Attrill – Love and Longing in the Marvellous City
Peggy Riley – Pearl
Tom Vowler – Busy. Come. Wait.
Paul McGuire – Hope Street
Jo Cannon – Shutters
Jarred McGinnis – Learning Stick
Henrietta Rose-Innes – Falling
Contributors
Jonathan Attrill is 41 and lives in North London. He writes fiction and poetry and has contributed to London Writers’ Anthology 2004, Tales of the Decongested vol.1, New Short Stories 1, The New Writer et al. He also practises Tai Chi and plays guitar and drums. In the eighties he avoided the new romantics by forming neo-rockabilly outfit The Nitros, making an album with them in 1988. He has a fondness for lemurs, especially sifakas, so much so that in 2008 he spent eight weeks living with them in the forests of Madagascar.
Jo Cannon is a Sheffield G.P. Her stories have appeared in The Reader, Myslexia, Cadenza, Brand and New Writer among others, and in anthologies including Route and Leaf Books. Competition successes include firsts in HISSAC and Writers Inc, and runner up in Fish International.
Carys Davies's short stories have won prizes in national and international competitions, including the Bridport, Asham, Orange/Harpers & Queen and Fish. They have been published in magazines and anthologies and broadcast on BBC Radio 4. Her debut collection of short stories Some New Ambush (Salt, 2007) was shortlisted for the 2009 Roland Mathias Prize, longlisted for the 2008 Wales Book of the Year Prize and a Finalist in the 2008 Calvino Prize in the US. She lives in Lancaster with her husband and four children.
Willie Davis, a native of Whitesburg, Kentucky, has had fiction appear in The Guardian and The Kenyon Review amongst other journals. He is the winner of the 2007 Willesden Herald Prize and The 2007 Katherine Ann Porter Prize. “Emily Strabnow's Freckles” is an excerpt from his recently completed novel, Honeysuckle Season. He currently teaches English and Creative Writing at The University of Maryland.
Julia Sarah Goubert writes a wide range of fiction, usually under the pseudonym Natalya Lowndes. Her three novels, Chekago, Angel in the Sun and Snow Red, were all published by Hodder and Stoughton. She has contributed short fiction to Iota, The Frogmore Papers, Grist and to BBC Radio 3, Nightwaves. In 2005 she was elected to a Hawthornden Writing Fellowship, in 2006 a residency at the Chateau de Lavigny and in 2008 received an award from the Society of Authors. She teaches at the University of Essex and lives in a village near Colchester.
Toby Litt grew up in Ampthill, Bedfordshire. He is the author of two collections of short stories, Adventures in Capitalism and Exhibitionism, and nine novels, including deadkidsongs, Journey into Space and the forthcoming King Death. He is a Granta Best of Young British Novelist. His story “John and John” won the 2009 Manchester Fiction Prize. His website is at www.tobylitt.com.
Jarred McGinnis was born in the New Mexico, grew up in Florida, lives in London and pines for Edinburgh. “Learning Stick” is an excerpt from a novel that has been curing in his desk drawer since winning the People’s Choice award at a Novel Pitch competition. Maybe he should try to get it published or something. What do you think?
Paul McGuire writes for the influential Just Liverpool Magazine and has written plays for the Bunbury Banter Theatre Company and been broadcast on Hayes FM and Audio Book Radio. He was a 2008 Year of Culture writing finalist and won the First Writers International Short Story Competition and The Comma Press Short Story Award. Paul can be heard performing his work in Borders bookshop, Coffee Union and in the Third Room of the Everyman Theatre and also contributes to local radio. He has an M.A. in Creative Writing from Liverpool John Moores University. www.paulmcguire.net
Nuala Ní Chonchúir is an award-winning fiction writer and poet, born in Dublin in 1970, now living in County Galway. Her third short fiction collection Nude was published by Salt in September 2009. The Irish Times called it ‘a memorable achievement’. She is one of four winners of the 2009 Templar Poetry Pamphlet and Collection competition. Her pamphlet Portrait of the Artist with a Red Car was published in November 2009; a full collection The Juno Charm is due November 2010. Nuala’s novel You will be published by New Island in April 2010. She received an Arts Council Bursary in 2009 and she is fiction editor of Horizon Review. Website: www.nualanichonchuir.com. Blog: www.womenrulewriter.blogspot.com
Wena Poon, 36, is the author of two short fiction books, Lions In Winter and The Proper Care of Foxes, a quartet of magic realist novels collected in The Biophilia Omnibus, and a forthcoming novel Alex y Robert, about an American woman matador in Spain. In Asia, her books have been nominated for CNN Singapore’s ‘Best Book Gift of the Year 2009’, the Singapore Literature Prize, and Malaysia’s Readers Choice Awards. In Europe, she was longlisted for the 2008 Frank O’Connor Short Story Award and was awarded the 2010 Hawthornden Castle Fellowship. Originally from Singapore, she lives in the United States.
Peggy Riley is a writer and playwright. Her short fiction has been broadcast on BBC Radio Kent and was shortlisted for the 2009 Asham Award. She has recently finished her first novel. As a playwright she has had work produced, commissioned and developed at a number of off-West End and regional theatres, as well as tours and residencies in site-specific spaces including historic churches, houses, and a former women’s internment camp. She regularly runs creative workshops in schools, arts centres and prisons, and runs East Kent Live Lit, a live literature network. Originally from Los Angeles, Peggy Riley lives in Whitstable on the North Kent coast.
Henrietta Rose-Innes is a novelist and short-story writer based in Cape Town, South Africa. She has written two novels, Shark’s Egg and The Rock Alphabet (2000 and 2004), and edited a miscellany of South African writing, “Nice Times!” (2006). Her short stories have appeared in a variety of publications in South Africa, the UK and Germany. Her writing has been translated into German, Arabic and Romanian, and Dream Homes, a collection of short pieces, appeared in German translation in 2008. In 2008 she won the Caine Prize for African Writing, for which she was shortlisted the previous year, and in 2007 she received the Southern African PEN short story award. She has held writing residencies in Germany, Switzerland, the USA and South Africa. She can be found online at www.henriettarose-innes.com and www.henriettaroseinnes.book.co.za.
Kevin Spaide is from Auburn, New York. His stories have appeared or are forthcoming in Witness, Per Contra, The Summerset Review, Short Fiction, Identity Theory, Frigg, Opium Magazine, and several other places, both online and in print. His short story collection Chancing Vertigo is currently making the rounds of the publishers, and he has just completed a novel. After spending six years in the northwest of Ireland, he moved to Spain. He lives in Madrid with his wife and son.
Tom Vowler lives on the edge of Dartmoor. His short stories have appeared in various places, won a competition or two, and his first collection is currently shortlisted for the Scott Prize. An Arts Council grant allowed him to research and write his second novel, unencumbered temporarily by the need for proper employment. In his spare time he is the Assistant Fiction Editor of the literary journal Short FICTION.
Willesden Herald
New
Short Stories
4
