Best British Short Stories 2019

The nation’s favourite annual guide to the short story, now in its ninth 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.

Featuring stories by: Julia Armfield, Elizabeth Baines, Naomi Booth, Kieran Devaney, Vicky Grut, Nigel Humphreys, Sally Jubb, Lucie McKnight Hardy, Robert Mason, Ann Quin, Sam Thompson, Melissa Wan and Ren Watson.

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).

JULIA ARMFIELD is a fiction writer with a Master’s in Victorian Art and Literature from Royal Holloway University. She lives and works in London. Her work has been published in Granta, Lighthouse, Analog Magazine, Neon Magazine and Best British Short Stories 2019. She was longlisted for the Deborah Rogers Prize 2018 and was the winner of the White Review Short Story Prize 2018. In 2019, she was shortlisted for the Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year award. Her debut collection, salt slow, was published by Picador in May 2019, and by Flatiron in the US. salt slow was longlisted for the Polari Prize 2020 and the Edge Hill Prize 2020 and was shortlisted for the London Magazine Prize for Debut Fiction 2020. Her story Longshore Drift won a Pushcart Prize in 2020. Her debut novel, Our Wives Under the Sea, will be published in 2022 by Picador and Flatiron.

Elizabeth Baines is the author of two short story collections and three novels (all available from Salt), and has written prize-winning drama for BBC Radio 4. In the past, Elizabeth has written, performed and produced plays for fringe theatre, has worked as a secondary-school teacher and has taught Creative Writing at Manchester University and the Bolton Institute. She was born in South Wales and now lives in Manchester where she brought up her two sons.

Naomi Booth was born and raised in West Yorkshire. Her novella, The Lost Art of Sinking (Penned in the Margins), was selected for New Writing North’s Read Regional campaign 2017 and won the Saboteur Award for Best Novella. Her debut novel, Sealed (Dead Ink Books), is a work of eco-horror. It was short-listed for the Not the Booker Award 2018 and Naomi was named a Fresh Voice: Fifty Writers to Read Now by the Guardian. ‘Cluster’ was long-listed for the Sunday Times Short Story Award 2018 and the Galley Beggar Short Story Prize 2018. Her new novel, Exit Management, will be published by Dead Ink Books in 2020. She lives in York and lectures on Creative Writing and Literature.

Ruby Cowling was born in Bradford and lives in London. Her short fiction has won awards including The White Review Short Story Prize and the London Short Story Prize, and has been short-listed in competitions with Glimmer Train, Aesthetica, Short Fiction and Wasafiri. Publication credits include Lighthouse, The Lonely Crowd, the Galley Beggar Press Singles Club and numerous print anthologies. Her collection This Paradise was published by Boiler House Press in 2019.