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Lucy Caldwell and Vanessa Onwuemezi are among those shortlisted for this year’s £10,000 Edge Hill Short Story Prize.
The prize is now in its 16th year and is the only national literary award to recognise excellence in a published, single-authored short story collection.
Caldwell is up for Intimacies (Faber) while Onwuemezi is nominated for Dark Neighbourhood (Fitzcarraldo Editions). They will be in contention with Man Hating Psycho by Iphgenia Baal (Influx Press), Dance Move by Wendy Erskine (Stinging Fly/Picador) and Send Nudes by Saba Sams (Bloomsbury).
This year’s shortlist includes two previously shortlisted writers, Caldwell and Erskine, and two debut collections by Onwuemezi and Sams.
A £1,000 Readers’ Choice Award will also be presented to one of the shortlisted authors, as well as a £500 prize for the best short story submitted by an Edge Hill MA in creative writing student.
Billy Cowan, prize organiser and senior lecturer in creative writing, said: “We had a record number of entries this year making our job very difficult, but in the end these five books resonated the most with our readers.
“It is an exciting mixture of established and new writers and I’m particularly thrilled that we have two debut collections on the list.”
The winners of this year’s awards will be announced in November.
The judges of the 2022 prize are 2021 winner Kevin Barry, literary development agent Arzu Tahsin and Sarah Schofield, writer and lecturer in creative writing at Edge Hill University.