Please meet the other 10 fantastic writers in the running for this year’s top prize and whose stories will be published in BSSP anthology Volume 15, now available to pre-order from Tangent Books.
Congratulations to the writers, we’re thrilled to be publishing their stories.
Jyoti Patel is a London-based author. She is a graduate of the University of East Anglia’s Creative Writing Prose Fiction MA and winner of the 2021 #Merky Books New Writers’ Prize. Her writing has previously been published as part of WePresent’s ‘Literally’ Series. Her debut novel, The Things That We Lost, will be published by #Merky Books in January 2023.
Diana Powell’s stories have featured in a number of competitions, such as the 2020 Society of Authors ALCS Tom-Gallon Trust Award (runner-up), the 2020 TSS Cambridge Prize (3rd place) and the 2019 Chipping Norton Literature Festival Prize (winner). Her work has appeared in several anthologies and journals, including Best British Short Stories 2020 (Salt). Her novella, Esther Bligh, was published in June 2018 (Holland House Books). Her collection of stories, Trouble Crossing the Bridge, came out in 2020. Another novella, The Sisters of Cynvael, won the 2021 Cinnamon Press Literature Award and will be published next year.
Sufiyaan Salam was born in Blackburn, and is now based in Manchester, UK. He currently works as a script editor for BBC Studio’s JoJo & Gran Gran, and was a part of the BBC Writersroom Northern Voices group in 2022. Outside of the 9-5, he keeps himself busy with various prose, television and theatre projects in development. His short story, The Kashmiri and the Romanian, was published by Bandit Fiction in 2020.
Rachel Sloan is an art historian, curator and writer. Born and raised in the suburbs of Chicago, she has called the UK home for most of her adult life. Her work has appeared in The Antigonish Review, Elsewhere, Moxy, Stonecrop Review, STORGY, and Canopy: an anthology of writing for the Urban Tree Festival (2021). She was Highly Commended in the 2020 Bridport Prize, runner-up in the 2021 Urban Tree Festival writing competition, longlisted for the 2021 Nan Shepherd Prize in nature writing and a finalist in the 2021 London Independent Story Prize.
Johanna Spiers is a qualitative health researcher by day and a writer by night. She is currently querying agents with her novel, Social Death, in which a snarky barmaid’s ex declares her dead online – and is now coming for her IRL. Johanna also writes short stories about horrible people doing horrible things and, if you ask her nicely, the occasional funny poem. She DJs hip hop whenever she is allowed and believes yoga is the solution to most problems. Twitter (@JohannaSpiers) and Facebook (Johanna Spiers writer)
Kailash Srinivasan is an Indian-Canadian author living in Vancouver. His narratives often highlight fractures of different kinds: personal, societal, economic, religious, and political. He also writes about class, injustice and inequality. His prose and poetry have appeared in several Canadian and international literary journals, including Handwritten & Co., Midway Journal, Snarl, Hunger, Coachella Review, Selkie, Lunch Ticket and others. His short story, Bikhari, was the runner-up in the 2022 Prime Number Magazine Awards for Poetry & Short Fiction. His work has also been shortlisted for Into the Void Fiction Prize and longlisted for the Bath Short Story Award. He has an MFA in Creative Writing from UBC and is working on his first novel.
Henry Stennett is a Brit(ish)-Jamaican writer who lives in Bristol. During his PhD, he tried to discover antibiotics from deep-sea sponges. While he failed in that goal, he did get to name some new species of bacteria. After a cruel misadventure in medical advertising, Henry is now enjoying his work as a science communicator. He translates jargon into plain English and shapes it into stories. Elision was the first short story he wrote – he’s cooking up some more.
Dennis Tafoya lives near Philadelphia and is the author of three crime novels set in and around the city. His short stories have appeared in magazines and anthologies such as Philadelphia Noir and Best American Mystery Stories. His work has been nominated for multiple awards and been optioned for film and television.
Nora Thurkle is from Catford, south-east London, and studied Creative Writing with the Open University. She placed second in the London Magazine Short Story Prize 2021 and was shortlisted for the 2021 Galley Beggar Press Short Story Prize for her story Inaudible Frequencies. She has also had work featured on Lunate, Liars’ League, Dear Damsels and The Toast. Nora works as a primary school teacher.
Ellen Wiese is a Chicago-based writer and theater artist currently working in Norwich. Her fiction has appeared in Wigleaf, The Bookends Review, and Lost Balloon, from which she received a 2020 Best Microfiction nomination, and her short story, Noise, was listed on Glimmer Train’s 2018 Very Short Fiction Top 25. She has also developed short and full-length plays with Trap Door Theatre and Chimera Ensemble. Ellen is currently enrolled in the MA Prose Fiction program at the University of East Anglia.
Congratulations to all the writers and we wish them best of luck for October 15th.
Their stories will be published in our 15th anthology which is available to pre-order from Tangent Books.