Now incorporating The Sudbury Hill Harrow and Wherever End Times

Thursday, February 23, 2012

Introducing the authors of the short-listed stories 2012

Introducing the authors of the short-listed stories for the international Willesden Herald new short stories competition 2012

Jo Barker Scott was born in London, but spent most of her childhood overseas, in Kenya, Pakistan and Iran, with a fluctuating number of siblings, foster-siblings, ayahs, lodgers and animals. These days she lives in Winchester, and her adventures are purely of the literary kind.

Dermot Duffy was born and remains in Coolock, North Dublin, “a town which has just one chocolate factory but many many Willy Wonkas”. The Coastal Shelf is his first short story.

Virginia Gilbert is a BAFTA nominated, award-winning writer and director. She writes and directs for film, radio and television. Her screenwriting work has been placed on the BritList and she was named as a 'Star of Tomorrow' by Screen International. She also writes short fiction, and has been published internationally. Her short stories have been shortlisted for the RTE Francis MacManus award and BBC Radio 4 broadcast a season of her work. Her debut collection of short fiction was shortlisted for the Scott Prize 2011. She is currently preparing her debut feature film as writer-director, shooting April 2012.

Nick Holdstock's work has previously appeared in n+1, the London Review of Books, and The Southern Review. The Tree That Bleeds, a book about his time in western China, came out from Luath Press last year.

Charles Lambert has published two novels, Little Monsters and Any Human Face, and a collection of short stories, The Scent of Cinnamon, the title story of which won an O. Henry Award. He lives in Italy.

Geraldine Mills is a poet and short fiction writer from Galway, Ireland. Arlen House published her two short story collections Lick of the Lizard (2005) and The Weight of Feathers (2007). She has had two collections of poetry published by Bradshaw Books, Unearthing Your Own (2001) and Toil the Dark Harvest (2004). An Urgency of Stars (2010) and The Other Side of Longing (2011), a collaboration with U.S. poet, Lisa C. Taylor, were published by Arlen House. Her short story collections are taught at the University of Connecticut and Eastern Connecticut State University.

Mary O'Shea's ambition to have an ordinary life sprang, more or less directly, from one summer spent working as an undercover agent at a Butlins Holiday Camp in North Wales, and another waiting tables at a Mafia-run restaurant in Newport, R.I. Ordinary living led her to the practice of fiction. Stories have become her passion. She published some (New Irish Writing, London Magazine, New Short Stories 5), won awards for some (Hennessy, William Trevor, and the Willesden Herald International Short Story Prize 2011). She lives with her husband in Cork.

Eliza Robertson is a Canadian who has found her way to the UK to pursue her Masters in Prose Fiction at the University of East Anglia. Her work has appeared in numerous journals across across Canada, and has been short-listed for National Magazine Awards and the McClelland & Stewart Journey Prize. She is the 2011-2012 recipient of the University of East Anglia’s Man Booker Scholarship.

Francis Scappaticci was born in Ireland in 1960 and raised in Clones, County Monaghan. He has progressed from Art School dropout to London-based illustrator and can currently be found writing and painting on the Costa Brava where he lives with his partner and five cats.

Y.J. Zhu, a Beijing native, now lives in San Francisco. Her stories have appeared in anthologies and won awards. She recently completed a collection of short stories and is writing a novel.

Links
The 2012 short list announcement
Invitation to Willesden on a spring evening


Update: And the result is 

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