With our focus having been on preparing this year’s anthology for printing and organising the 2022 awards ceremony, there are several pieces of exciting publication and other news that happened over the last couple of months that we are yet to share.
Joanna Campbell’s latest novel, Instructions for the Working Day was published in August by Fairlight Books.
From the publisher’s website: “Neil Fischer is travelling to a village in East Germany that he has unexpectedly inherited – his father’s former hometown of Marschwald. Knowing it has been left to deteriorate for decades after the fall of the Berlin Wall, Neil is determined to restore the derelict village to its former glory, as his demanding late father would surely have wanted. But when he arrives, he is met with hostility, mistrust and underlying menace.
“His only friend in Marschwald is Silke, who is coming to terms with her traumatic experiences during the Cold War and has recently uncovered a shocking truth. As tensions rise, a series of surreal encounters force Neil to contend with his own troubled past – but in his present, all signs point to danger.”
Eluned Gramich’s new novel, Windstill is being published by Honno later this month. “Set in Hamburg in 2015, this compelling début novel by a Welsh-German writer finds Lora staying with her German grandmother following the death of her grandfather. With the arrival of two uninvited guests including Lora’s ex-boyfriend, tensions lead to the uncovering of family secrets” Caroline Sanderson, The Bookseller
Mona Dash and her novel Scattering Stars Like Dust were signed by the Portobello Literary agency in the summer. The agency call it a “stunning novel about mothers and daughters”
David Frankel will have his short story, Sink Rate, published in Best British Short Stories 2022, edited by Nicholas Royle and published by Salt. The anthology will be published in November this year.
Andre Bagoo’s debut short story collection, The Dreaming was published in August by Peepal Tree Press.
“Bagoo takes a long view of the short story and has a particular gift for stories made of stories: the haircuts along a young man’s stumbling path to wisdom or the sexual encounters that map the history of a failing relationship. There is pathos here, and sometimes anger, but above all Bagoo is a very funny writer, his crystal-clear prose making the most of his dry, self-deprecating humour.” – Jo Lloyd, winner of the 2019 BBC Short Story Award and author of Something Wonderful.
Foday Mannah was announced as the winner of Hachette UK’s Mo Siewcharran Prize for unpublished fiction writers of Black, Asian and minority ethnic backgrounds last week. Foday, who won with his novel, The Search for Othella Savage won £2,500 and his novel will be considered for publication by Quercus.
Congratulations to all; it’s exciting to see these great writers finding more readers.