author website
My contribtor’s copy of Best British Short Stories has arrived and I’m delighted to be in such good company. There are stories by Graham Mort, Livvi Michael, Tom Vowler, Karen Stevens, my good friend Annemarie Neary and Graham Greene!
In June, I presented a paper entitled ‘Short Fiction in a Digital World’ at the 2026 conference of the European Network for Short Story Research (ENSFR). I came to the subject via my current writing project, which is a series of stories following two sisters from the year 2000 to the present day. As the stories moved closer to the present, I began to wonder how we as fiction writers should respond to the incredible technological changes we’ve seen in the early 21st century. It has changed the way we live, the way we communicate and interact. Should it change the way we write? Andrea Marzocchi invited me to talk more about the question for his short story podcast A Small Good Thing. The episode is available to listen to here.
The first of these stories is published in The Manchester Review #29. It’s set in 2003 so there is no mention of tech. (Image © Darlene Alderson, Pexels.com)
Really pleased to see my story ‘The Eid Dinner’ in the latest issue of The Manchester Review. It’s one of twelve stories following sisters Mel and Paula from 2000 to the present. This one is set in 2003. (Image: © Charles Eastwood)
One of my stories will be included in this year’s edition of Best British Short Stories, a great series edited by Nicholas Royle for Salt Publishing. That’s made my year!
In September 2025, my story ‘Going Uptown’ received an honourable mention in the Leicester Writes Short Story Prize and I went to Leicester for the prize ceremony. It was great to meet that incredible whirlwind of action, writer and publisher Farhana Sheikh (pictured below), as well as spending time with writers Laura Besley, Tim Cook and Abi Hynes. The event was part of Dahlia Books’ annual programme Short Story September.
My short story ‘My Own True Name’ is now available to read online as part of the The Masters Review Best Emerging Writers series. The print edition of the anthology, selected by novelist Gina Chung, will be published in May (US only). The story is pure fiction, but it was inspired by conversations I had with many of the women who looked after my mother in the final years of her life. (Click here to read the story on The Masters Review website.)
This week I heard that one of my stories has been chosen by novelist Gina Chung for the 13th Masters Review Anthology, which will be published in the States in May 2025. I’m so pleased!
A pleasurable end to the year with news from Kitchen Table Quarterly that they have nominated my essay ‘Circus Loves’ for the Pushcart Prize. The picture comes from my grandmother’s photo album of 1914. It shows her teen crush, the circus rider Othelia Orlando.
Writing this essay for Psyche about why I don’t drive took me on many detours. I thought about public transport. I thought about road movies and the idea of freedom. I thought about climate change and all the many reasons why we need to find alternatives to cars. But I kept coming back to my mother who loved to drive. Here she is in 1968 with our first family car. You can read the essay here.
