Dinesh Allirajah Prize for Short Fiction Awards Evening
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Online via Zoom: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/dinesh-allirajah-prize-for-short-fiction-awards-evening-tickets-1323565422809?aff=oddtdtcreator
About the event
Join us to celebrate the incredible shortlisted authors for this year's Dinesh Allirajah Prize for Short Fiction. Hear from our judging panel on the process of judging these entries on the theme of 'The Unspoken' 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.
Meet the Judging Panel...
Alison Moore’s debut novel, The Lighthouse, was shortlisted for the 2012 Man Booker Prize and the National Book Awards, winning the McKitterick Prize. Her fifth novel, The Retreat, was published in 2021. She's also published a trilogy for children, beginning with Sunny and the Ghosts. Her short stories have been included in Best British Short Stories and Best British Horror and broadcast on BBC Radio. She's published two collections: The Pre-War House and Other Stories, whose title story won the New Writer Novella Prize, and Eastmouth and Other Stories. She's also the author of five Nightjar Press chapbooks, her latest being The Junction. She’s an honorary lecturer in the School of English at the University of Nottingham. www.alison-moore.com
Joseph Hunter is co-editor of The Manchester Review. He is a fiction writer and poet whose poetry and fiction have been published in various literary journals and anthologies. He studied English at Trinity Hall, University of Cambridge, before spending a decade away from education. He completed his MA in Creative Writing at the University of Manchester in 2020, and went on to study for a PhD in English and Creative Writing. He teaches at the University of Manchester, and his critical research is concerned with narrative theory. He is writing a novel about the (self) destructive facets of masculinity.
Dr Robert Duggan is Senior Lecturer in Modern and Contemporary Literature at the University of Central Lancashire, where he is Subject Leader for English Literature. Robert's research focuses on literary form and experiments in genre in current writing and he has published on a range of contemporary authors and artists including China Miéville, Iain (M.) Banks and Michael Cunningham.
Jacques Tsiantar is an award-winning, disabled writer of fiction, poetry, and an English language teacher based in Edinburgh. His work, which appears in publications such as Gutter and New Writing Scotland, takes a speculative and uncanny look at climate anxiety, gender, illness, and grief. He is the winner of the 2024 Dinesh Allirajah Short Fiction Prize and was shortlisted for The Bridge Award’s Emerging Writer Award in 2022, and the MMU Novella Award in 2016 with his domestic thriller titled RUIN. He is currently working on a debut novel, short story collection, and performing original poetry in Edinburgh.
Meet the shortlisted authors...
Iain Rowan is a Sunderland-based writer represented by Clare Coombes at the Liverpool Literary Agency. A published novelist, Iain's been shortlisted for the CWA Debut Dagger and the Bath Novel Award, is the winner of a Northern Writers Award, and won second place in the 2019 Costa Short Story Award.
Laura Theis writes in her second language. Her work appears in Poetry, Oxford Poetry, Strange Horizons, Magma, Rattle, Berlin Lit, etc. Accolades include the Alpine Fellowship Writing Prize, Oxford Brookes Poetry Prize, AM Heath Prize, Mogford Short Story Prize, and a Forward Prize nomination. Her poetry debut how to extricate yourself, an Oxford Poetry Library Book-of-the-Month, was nominated for the Elgin Award and won the Brian Dempsey Memorial Prize. A Spotter’s Guide To Invisible Things received the Live Canon Collection Prize, and the Arthur Welton Award from the Society of Authors. Her latest publications are Introduction To Cloud Care (Broken Sleep Books) and her forthcoming children’s debut Poems From A Witch’s Pocket (Emma Press).
JL Bogenschneider's work has appeared a number of literary journals, including The Stinging Fly, The London Magazine, Lunate and Ambit. Their chapbook Fears For The Near Future was published in 2018 by Neon Books under the name CS Mierscheid. In 2021 they joined the London Library's Emerging Writers Programme. In 2023 they were awarded Society of Authors funding towards a formally innovative novella. In 2024 they were shortlisted for the Desperate Literature and The London Magazine Short Fiction Prizes, and the Writers & Artists’ Working Class Writers’ Prize. They are currently seeking representation and a publisher for a collection of short fiction, and working on a novel about televangelism and the religious right.
S. Bhattacharya-Woodward is a writer from London. Her short stories won her 3rd place in the Deborah Rogers Foundation Writers Award in 2020, and she has had stories published by the Bristol Short Story Prize and the London Short Story Prize. She is also an award-winning science journalist, and was previously acting Science and Technology Editor for the Observer newspaper’s New Review section.
Liam Hogan is an award-winning speculative short story writer, with stories in Best of British Science Fiction and in Best of British Fantasy (NewCon Press). He volunteers at the creative writing charities Ministry of Stories, and Spark Young Writers. Sci-Fi collection: A Short History of the Future (Northodox Press). Fantasy: Happy Ending Not Guaranteed (Arachne Press). More details at http://happyendingnotguaranteed.blogspot.co.uk
Edward Hogan is from Derby. His novels include Blackmoor, and The Electric. His recent stories have been shortlisted for awards including the V.S. Pritchett Prize and the Manchester Fiction Prize. His story ‘Single Sit’ won the Galley Beggar Press Short Story Prize, and was published in Best British Stories 2022. Ed works for the Open University, and lives in Brighton.
Taysian Quinones is a first year English Literature student who has dedicated herself to the subject from the beginning. She is always writing something, a short story or poem, when she isn’t reading or studying. She adores many genres but her personal favourites to write are romance and mystery. Her goal, as a writer, is to write the parts of life that can’t be spoken outright, using fiction as a way to make difficult topics more accessible. She is looking for more opportunities to publish her poems and fiction.
Frankie Todd is a psychology graduate, personal trainer and self taught artist looking for creative work opportunities. She recently showed her writing in the video art "F is for Elephant" at Grundy gallery. She published more in this style as Adrianna Freckle "making bad content 4 the lonely" on YouTube. Frankie is posting a zine series called "Say Less" about simple writing at zinesbyme.gumroad. She published her first attempts at poetry using marginalia from her Psychology degree at psigranger.wordpress. She can be found performing her work at open mics. She is an aspiring creative, as she believes playing is a virtue.
