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!
I’ll have work in Best British Short Stories 2026
Leicester Writes Short Story Prize Ceremony
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 Own True Name’ published online
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.)
A story of mine picked for The Masters Review Anthology XIII
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!
‘Beautiful Day’ published by Fictive Dreams
Pushcart nomination in 2023
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.
Why not driving is my own form of resistance
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.
Winner of Trip Fiction ‘Sense of Place’ contest
I’m so pleased that a story of mine won first prize in the 2021 Trip Fiction ‘Sense of Place’ contest. The judges were novelists Victoria Hislop and Rosanna Ley, publisher Katharina Bielenberg (MacLehose Press), and Tina Hartas (founder of TripFiction).
The story is a fictionalised account of the journey my grandmother made in October 1940, leaving her home in Bangkok to return to Sweden because of the war. You can read it here:
My essay on Henri Bergson, time & my Swedish grandmother
I’m currently researching a creative nonfiction book – working title, Cool Hearts: the story of a Swedish family – and my enquiries have led me into many interesting side alleys. One of the by-products is this essay on Henri Bergson, the nature of time and memory, and my Swedish grandmother, which was published in the digital magazine Aeon/ Psyche (8 September 2020).
Spanish Flu in Sweden, 1918
I’ve written a short piece on the 1918 Spanish Flu epidemic in Sweden for Marina Benjamin’s pop-up Corona blog, Garden Among Fires. It’s the first outing for material I’ve been working on for some time now. Postcard from Gothenburg, 1918.
Vicky Grut 