Full shortlist and selected stories online: Announcement – 2021 Edge Hill Shortlist.
Jo Lloyd’s Stories on Strong Edge Hill Shortlist 2021
Full shortlist and selected stories online: Announcement – 2021 Edge Hill Shortlist.
Tag: Jo Lloyd
Full shortlist and selected stories online: Announcement – 2021 Edge Hill Shortlist.
Successes in 2019 for New Short Stories contributors
2019 Highlights
November 11: V.S. Pritchett Short Story Prize 2019 goes to Ursula Brunetti for “Beetleboy”.
October 2: BBC National Short Story Award with Cambridge University 2019: “The Invisible” by Jo Lloyd
September 27: Out Now: “The False River” short story collection by Nick Holdstock
September 20: Double chapbook launch. “Past contributors to WH New Short Stories, Brian Kirk and Jill Widner, enjoyed a double win at the Cork International Short Story Festival 2019.” (See also Feb. 15)
September 12: Danielle McLaughlin takes The Times/ Audible Short Story Award 2019
August 24: Book launch: “Like Water and Other Stories” by Olga Zilberbourg
July 3: Book launch: “Chalk Tracks” by Gina Challen, twice contributor to New Short Stories
March 13: Danielle McLaughlin receives Windham-Campbell award
Feb 15: Friends of Willesden Herald take both Southword fiction chapbook awards 2019
Latest
Willesden Herald New Short Stories 11 is available from High Street Bookshops Online as well as Amazon (UK), Amazon.com and other booksellers. Link: More details including author pictures and profiles.
BBC National Short Story Award with Cambridge University 2019: “The Invisible” by Jo Lloyd
“WELSH WRITER JO LLOYD WINS THE 2019 BBC NATIONAL SHORT STORY AWARD WITH ‘TIMELESS’ AND ‘DEEPLY TENDER’ STORY INFLUENCED BY BREXIT, SOCIAL DIVISION AND FOLKLORE” (BBC Radio 4)
“Welsh writer Jo Lloyd has won the fourteenth BBC National Short Story Award with Cambridge University 2019 (NSSA) for ‘The Invisible’, a distinctive and compellingly original story. Inspired by the life of an 18th Century woman from Carnarvonshire called Martha who claimed to be friends with an invisible family living in an invisible mansion, Lloyd discovered her story by chance in the online Dictionary of Welsh Biography. Set in a close-knit community, the story is both timeless and universal, and resonates profoundly in an age where fear of outsiders and social division is rife.”
Listen: Aimee-Ffion Edwards reads “Jo Lloyd’s hypnotic tale about the fantasies people embrace to make life bearable” The Invisible by Jo Lloyd.
Read: “Welsh writer takes £15,000 prize for The Invisible, based on a real 18th-century woman who spread tales in her village” Guardian report including the text of the short story.
Interview: Jo Lloyd on Winning the 2019 BBC National Short Story Award (Wasafiri)
This news continues a series of successes this year by previous Willesden international short story prize winners. Jo Lloyd won the Willesden in 2009 with her story “Work”, which you can read in New Short Stories 3.
The BBC National Short Story Award 2019 – Finalists
The shortlist is:
- ‘The Children’ by Lucy Caldwell
- ‘Ghillie’s Mum’ by Lynda Clark
- ‘Silver Fish in the Midnight Sea’ by Jacqueline Crooks
- ‘My Beautiful Millennial’ by Tamsin Grey
- ‘The Invisible’ by Jo Lloyd
The result will be announced on Radio 4 “Front Row” on October 1st.
The O. Henry Prize Stories 2018 | PenguinRandomHouse.com
ABOUT THE O. HENRY PRIZE STORIES 2018
The O. Henry Prize Stories 2018 contains twenty prize-winning stories chosen from thousands published in literary magazines over the previous year. The winning stories come from a mix of established writers and emerging voices, and are uniformly breathtaking.
via The O. Henry Prize Stories 2018 | PenguinRandomHouse.com
Looks like the O. Henry Prize anthology includes a new short story by Jo Lloyd, whose story “Work” took the Willesden Herald short story competition first prize in 2009, as judged by Rana Dasgupta. You can read it in New Short Stories 3. The mesmerising opening line from “Work” is also featured on the back cover of the book (see image).
Last Call – Inspirations and Prize Fund
Dear Writer Reader,
This is a copy of the text (with some corrections) from our last newsletter before the short story competition closing date, 31 August 2016. I wanted to share how some of our previous finalists got on, which I hope and believe you will find quite inspirational. We’ve also improved the prize fund, as shown below. Please send us your best short stories. Katy and I are looking forward to reading them.
Thanks,
Ed.
Inspirations: Success for Previous New Short Stories Finalists
Here is how some of our previous winners and finalists got on before and after appearing in New Short Stories. In no particular order:
Nick Holdstock @NickHoldstock since winning with “Ward” in 2014 has published The Casualties, a novel from St Martins Press.
Henrietta Rose-Innes @HenriettaRI won the Caine Prize for African Writing. Her story Falling appeared in New Short Stories 4.
Willie Davis’s story Kid in a Well from New Short Stories was also published online in The Guardian modern fiction. Link
In the same year she won first prize in our competition, Wena Poon went on to have her novel Alex y Robert serialised in ten parts on BBC Radio 4’s “A Book at Bedtime”.
Valerie Trueblood, shortlisted in our first year, went on to be shortlisted for the Frank O’Connor award for “Marry or Burn”.
Jo Lloyd (@jolloyds) who won first prize for her story Work, later in the same year won the Asham Award with another story.
Mikey Delgado’s winning story Secure was also published online in The Guardian original writing. Link
Previous winner Virginia Gilbert @GinnyGilbert went on to write and direct the feature film “A Long Way Home” with James Fox & Natalie Dormer as well as publishing a novel, among many other things (like so many of the writers listed here).
Vanessa Gebbie’s (@VanessaGebbie) later novel The Coward’s Tale was published by Bloomsbury in the UK & USA.
Danielle McLaughlin @DanniLmc went on to publish Dinosaurs on Other Planets, the title story from which appeared in The New Yorker.
More recent books of note by New Short Stories contributors:
Miss Emily by Nuala O’Connor @NualaNiC (Sandstone Press)
Time of the Locust by Morowa Yejidé http://www.morowayejide.com (Atria Books)
We Don’t Know What We’re Doing by Thomas Morris @tolmorris (Faber & Faber)
We could go on and on, and in fact we do that over on Twitter, so please follow @storyofthemonth for more literary inspiration and a few more quirky odds and ends.
Willesden Herald: New Short Stories 9
Prizes 2016
- 1st prize is a one-off Willesden Herald mug inscribed “The Willesden Short Story Prize 2016” and a bottle of champagne courtesy of Liars’ League.
- Additionally either (a) half of all net entry fees OR (b) all net entry fees after the first 150 entries, whichever is the greater, will be divided equally among the ten short-listed.
- All ten short-listed stories will be published in “Willesden Herald: New Short Stories 9”.
- Two complimentary copies of the anthology to each of the ten authors.
- A results/book launch event with Liars’ League actors reading from the short-listed stories.
- Literary agent Carrie Kania of Conville & Walsh agency has kindly agreed to read the ten winning stories.
For a look at the books, results events, history, pictures, videos and links, please visit Willesden Herald NEW SHORT STORIES. If you’re ready to submit, you can go straight to our page on Submittable. Thanks and may the muse be with you.
New Short Stories with Liars’ League
Liars’ League is an award-winning, globe-spanning live fiction event in its tenth year, so why not get in on the short story action? The next event, with a Gods & Mortals theme, is on Tuesday 13th September from 7.30pm at The Phoenix, 37 Cavendish Square, London W1G 0PP, and entry is just £5 on the door. The next submission deadline, for October’s Flesh & Bone Hallowe’en night, is Sunday 4th September: send your spine-chilling stories of 800-2000 words to liars@liarsleague.com and see www.liarsleague.com for full submission guidelines.
“I’m judging you, that’s my judging look!“
OUR JUDGE FOR 2016
Katy Darby’s short fiction has won various prizes, been read on BBC Radio 4, and appeared in magazines and anthologies including Stand, Mslexia, Slice, The London Magazine and the Arvon/Daily Telegraph Anthology. She has a BA in English Literature from Oxford University and an MA in Creative Writing from UEA, where she won the David Higham Award. Her first novel, The Unpierced Heart, is published by Penguin (Fig Tree). She is a Visiting Lecturer in Creative Writing at City University, is Literary Editor of .Cent and a former editor of Litro magazine, and co-founded and directs the award-winning short story event Liars’ League (www.liarsleague.com).
The story so far
We are thrilled and honoured to announce that David Means has kindly agreed to be the judge for the eighth annual Willesden Herald international short story competition.
David Means’ stories have a diamond-like sharpness and clarity, in which we visit locations, society and climates as vividly as in a waking dream. I couldn’t point to Sault Ste Marie on the map but I feel I’ve been there. I’ve never hung onto a train but I sort of know what it’s like now. I’ve never lived in an apartment in New York or slept rough but…you get the picture? Writers, you have your work cut out for you.
Links
Wikipedia: David Means
The Spot by David Means review by James Lasdun in the Guardian
Interview with David Means in the New York Times
Short stories by David Means in The New Yorker
NY podcast: David Means reads Chef’s House by Raymond Carver
David Means’ author page at Faber and Faber
So intercept a story when it stops at traffic lights, shine its windscreen with a piece of tissue paper the size of a coin, run home, type it out and send it to us as soon as electronically possible. Or whatever your process is. Closing date: Friday, 21 December 2012.
Willesden Herald: New Short Stories 3
Contents
- “Work” by Jo Lloyd
- “The Travellers” by Carys Davies
- “Tokyo Chocolate” by Morowa Yejidé
- “Amy” by Nick Holdstock
- “Ebb Tide” by Margot Taylor
- “Ante-Purgatory” by Carol Farrelly
- “The Imperfect Roundness of Things” by Claudia Boers
- “Propitiation” by Jenny Barden
- “Mina and Fina and Lotte Wattimena” by Jill Widner
- “The Hate Club” by Ben Cheetham
“A while back, when I was going through a bit of a tough time, this guy I knew, Paul, bought himself a restaurant, and when it was still pretty new and he’d spent all his money on forks and skewers and real people who knew how to run a restaurant, he asked if I would help out, and I said yes because I didn’t have a job and I didn’t seem to be capable of getting a job and I didn’t have a clue how to get myself out of the hole I’d fallen into.” (The opening sentence of Work by Jo Lloyd).
New Short Stories 