Best British Short Stories 2016

Nicholas Royle has published four collections of short fiction: Mortality (Serpent's Tail), Ornithology (Confingo Publishing), The Dummy & Other Uncanny Stories (Swan River Press) and London Gothic (Confingo Publishing). He is also the author of seven novels, most recently First Novel (Vintage), and a collaboration with artist David Gledhill, In Camera (Negative Press London). He has edited more than two dozen anthologies, including eleven earlier volumes of Best British Short Stories. He runs Nightjar Press, which publishes original short stories as signed, limited-edition chapbooks. His most recent book is White Spines: Confessions of a Book Collector (Salt Publishing) and forthcoming is another short story collection, Manchester Uncanny (Confingo Publishing).

Claire-Louise Bennett is the author of Pond, published by Fitzcarraldo Editions. She was born in Wiltshire and currently resides in the west of Ireland.

Neil Campbell is a short story writer, novelist and poet. From Manchester, England, he has appeared three times in the annual anthology of Best British Short Stories (2012/2015/2016). He has published four collections of short fiction, two novels, two poetry chapbooks and one poetry collection, as well as appearing in numerous magazines and anthologies.

Crista Ermiya was born in London to a Filipino mother and Turkish-Cypriot father. Her stories have been published widely in magazines and anthologies and her story in the present volume comes from her debut collection The Weather in Kansas published by Red Squirrel Press. Crista Ermiya is a winner of the Decibel Penguin Short Story Prize. She lives in Newcastle upon Tyne with her husband and son.

Stuart Evers is the author of two short story collections, Ten Stories About Smoking and Your Father Sends His Love, and a novel, If This is Home. He lives in London with his family.

Trevor Fevin worked for a number of years as a counsellor in the National Health Service. He was awarded a distinction for his MA in creative writing at Edge Hill University. His stories have been shortlisted in competitions with Chroma and Synaesthesia magazines.

David Gaffney lives in Manchester. He is the author of the novels Never Never (2008), All The Places I've Ever Lived ( 2017) and Out Of The Dark (2022) plus the flash fiction and short story collections Sawn-Off Tales (2006), Aromabingo (2007), The Half-Life of Songs (2010) and More Sawn-Off Tales (2013). His graphic novels with Dan Berry include The Three Rooms In Valerie's Head (2018) and Rivers (2021).

Janice Galloway is the author of three novels and four collections of short stories. She studied at Glasgow University and has worked as a teacher. Her awards include: the MIND/Allan Lane Award for The Trick is to Keep Breathing, the McVitie's Prize for Foreign Parts, the EM Forster Award (presented by the American Academy of Arts and Letters), the Creative Scotland Award, Saltire Scottish Book of the Year for Clara and the SMIT non-fiction Book of the Year for This is Not About Me. She has written and presented three radio series for BBC Scotland (Life as a Man, Imagined Lives and Chopin's Scottish Swansong) and works extensively with musicians and visual artists.

Jessie Greengrass was born in 1982. She studied philosophy in Cambridge and London, where she now lives with her partner and child. Her debut short story collection, An Account of the Decline of the Great Auk, According to One Who Saw It, is published by JM Originals, an imprint of John Murray.

Kate Hendry is a writer, editor and teacher living in Edinburgh. Her short stories have been published in Harpers, Mslexia and New Writing Scotland. She was a runner up in the 2009 Bridport Prize and has been a recipient of a Scottish Book Trust New Writer's Bursary. Her first collection of poems will be published by HappenStance Press in 2016.

The nation's favourite annual guide to the short story, now in its sixth year.

Best British Short Stories invites you to judge a book by its cover - or more accurately, by its title. This new series aims to reprint the best short stories published in the previous calendar year by British writers, whether based in the UK or elsewhere. The editor's brief is wide ranging, covering anthologies, collections, magazines, newspapers and web sites, looking for the best of the bunch to reprint all in one volume.

This new anthology includes stories by: Claire-Louise Bennett, Neil Campbell, Crista Ermiya, Stuart Evers, Trevor Fevin, David Gaffney, Janice Galloway, Jessie Greengrass, Kate Hendry, Thomas McMullan, Graham Mort, Ian Parkinson, Tony Peake, Alex Preston, Leone Ross, John Saul, Colette Sensier, Robert Sheppard, DJ Taylor, Greg Thorpe and Mark Valentine.

Best British Short Stories invites you to judge a book by its cover - or more accurately, by its title. This new series aims to reprint the best short stories published in the previous calendar year by British writers, whether based in the UK or elsewhere.

• Nicholas Royle - Introduction
• Leone Ross - The Woman Who Lived in a Restaurant
• Robert Sheppard - Arrivals
• Mark Valentine - Vain Shadows Flee
• Jessie Greengrass - The Politics of Minor Resistance
• Trevor Fevin - Walsingham
• Ian Parkinson - A Belgian Story
• DJ Taylor - Some Versions of Pastoral
• Colette Sensier - Mrs Swietokrzyskie's Castle
• Neil Campbell - A Leg to Stand On
• Alex Preston - Wyndham Le Strange Buys the School
• John Saul - Song of the River
• Greg Thorpe - 1961
• Crista Ermiya - 1977
• David Gaffney - The Staring Man
• Tony Peake - The Bluebell Wood
• Kate Hendry - My Husband Wants to Talk to Me Again
• Graham Mort - In Theory, Theories Exist
• Claire-Louise Bennett - Control Knobs
• Thomas McMullan - The Only Thing Is Certain Is
• Stuart Evers - Live from the Palladium
• Janice Galloway - Distance
• Contributors' Biographies
• Acknowledgements