Great news for our 2018 second prize winner, Chloe Wilson; her debut short story collection, Hold Your Fire, has just been bought by prestigious publishing house, Scribner Australia, in a four-way auction from agents Rach Crawford and Kate Johnson at MacKenzie Wolf. The collection will be published in 2021.

Scribner Publishing Director Ben Ball says: ‘Chloe Wilson is a genuinely thrilling new voice in Australian fiction. A kind of contemporary Gothic, her stories are marvellously unsettling, both haunting and funny, always brilliantly controlled. They strip away the varnish of decency to expose our raw grain of desire and power. She is making art.’    

Chloe says: ‘I’m absolutely delighted to be working with Scribner. They’re publishing some really impressive new Australian work and I’m thrilled to be included on their list.’

Chloe was signed by literary agent, Kate Johnson, at Mackenzie Wolf when Kate was a judge on our 2018 competition.

Huge congratulations to Chloe and we look forward to the collection coming our next year, by which time it will hopefully be available worldwide.

Chloe Wilson’s short story, Powerful Owl, won second prize in the 2018 Bristol Short Story Prize and is available in our volume 11 anthology, published by Tangent Books https://www.hive.co.uk/Product/Joe-Melia/Bristol-Short-Story-Prize-Anthology-Volume-11/23017280