The shortlist for the 2022 Edge Hill Short Story Prize has been revealed.
The prestigious prize is now in its 16th year and is the only national literary award to recognise excellence in a published, single-authored short story collection.
This year’s shortlist includes two previously shortlisted writers and two debut collections, with the winner set to scoop a £10,000 prize.
The five shortlisted books are:
- Man Hating Psycho by Iphgenia Baal (Influx Press)
- Intimacies by Lucy Caldwell (Faber)
- Dance Move by Wendy Erskine (Stinging Fly/Picador)
- Dark Neighbourhood by Vanessa Onwuemezi (Fitzcarraldo Editions)
- Send Nudes by Saba Sams (Bloomsbury)
A £1,000 Readers’ Choice Award will also be presented to one of the shortlisted authors, as well as a £500 prize for the best short story submitted by an Edge Hill MA Creative Writing student.
Prize organiser Billy Cowan, senior lecturer in Creative Writing, said: “We had a record number of entries this year making our job very difficult, but in the end these five books resonated the most with our readers.
“It is an exciting mixture of established and new writers and I’m particularly thrilled that we have two debut collections on the list.”
The winners of this year’s awards will be announced in November.
The judges of the 2022 prize are 2021 winner Kevin Barry, literary development agent Arzu Tahsin and Sarah Schofield, writer and lecturer in Creative Writing at Edge Hill University.
The Edge Hill Short Story Prize was founded in 2006 by the world’s first Professor of Short Fiction, Ailsa Cox, to highlight the intricate artisanship of short story writing and acknowledge the wealth of published collections available.
For more information about studying Creative Writing at Edge Hill, visit our subject page.
To discover more about our courses, please visit ehu.ac.uk/study.
August 23, 2022
