Dinesh Allirajah Prize Awards Evening 2024
celebrating the best of uncanny short fiction
About the event
Join us to celebrate the incredible shortlisted authors for this year's Dinesh Allirajah Prize for Short Fiction, centred around the theme of the Uncanny. Hear from our judging panel on the process of judging these entries before the winner is announced. We'll also announce two runners up, and hear a reading from the winning story. This event is free to attend and open to the public. Sign up now via eventbrite!
Meet the Shortlisted Authors…
Hana Gammon is a young South African writer who explores liminality and the uncanny. Her short story, The Undertaker's Apprentice, won the Africa region of the 2023 Commonwealth Short Story Prize, and her poetry has been published in collections including the Sol Plaatje European Union Poetry Award Anthology. Hana is currently studying Honours in English at the University of Stellenbosch. In her free time, she enjoys knitting, collecting oddities, and practicing HEMA (Historical European Martial Arts).
Alex Aspden is a writer based in London. His short fiction has appeared in The White Review, The London Magazine, 3:AM, Fieldnotes, the Prototype annual anthology and others. He has previously been shortlisted for The White Review Short Story Prize.
W.B. Gooderham is the author of Dedicated To: The Forgotten Friendships, Hidden Stories and Lost Loves found In Second-Hand Books. He has written for The Guardian, The Observer, Time Out and Wasafiri and has had fiction published by Comma Press, Fairlight Books and Tank Magazine.
Jess Glaisher is a queer, disabled writer and performer. Her debut novel Dear Lina was commissioned by Audible and published in 2020. It has been called 'A queer dystopia for our troubled times'. Her work has appeared in anthologies for Spread the Word and For Books' Sake. She is currently working on a short story collection and second novel. She is often to be found procrastinating with cake.
Philippa Ball Lewis is a freelance editor living on the coast in North Wales, where she and her husband try to stay in control of their baby, two cats, and three chickens. When not messing around with words, she can generally be found in the sea or the mountains. She is working on a fantastical short story collection and on her first novel, an exploration of grief, solitude and the sea.
Jacques Tsiantar is an Edinburgh-based, disabled writer of fiction published in Gutter Magazine, Cheval 7, 50[], shortlisted for the MMU Novella Award and Bridge Award’s Emerging Writer Award, and currently querying his debut novel RUIN, a domestic thriller.
Amy Lord is a Northern Writers Award winner from Middlesbrough; her novel, The Disappeared, will be published in May and she was a finalist in the Mslexia Short Story Prize 2023.
Meet the Judging Panel...
Dr David Hartley is a writer of weird short stories based in Manchester. His collection of tales about animals, Fauna, was published by Fly on the Wall Press and longlisted for the Edge Hill Short Story Prize. His work has appeared in Ambit Magazine, Black Static, The Ghastling, and British Fantasy Society: Horizons, among many others. He holds a PhD in Creative Writing from The University of Manchester where he researched the relationship between autism and science fiction. He is currently writer-in-residence in Tartu, Estonia for their UNESCO European Capital of Culture celebrations, and can be found on Instagram at @DHartleyWriter
Monica Kam is a lawyer and writer from Hong Kong. She won the Comma Press Dinesh Allirajah Prize in 2023 and is a recipient of the London Library Emerging Writers Programme 2023/24 and Spread the Word’s London Writers Award 2022. Monica is currently completing a collection of short stories set in Hong Kong.
Dr Stephen Curtis is a part-time lecturer at the University of Central Lancashire. He is currently writing a monograph on early modern horror, and is a reviewer at the Sixth Axis.
David Sue is an assistant editor at Comma Press and freelance arts journalist. He is the series editor of Comma's popular Reading The City series, and he is currently editing the short story anthology The Book of Manchester, set for publication in August. As a journalist, he has written articles for The Guardian, NME, Manchester Evening News and Time Out.
