is the author of six short story collections - "Mortality", "Ornithology", "The Dummy and Other Uncanny Stories", "London Gothic", "Manchester Uncanny" and "Paris Fantastique" - and seven novels, most recently "First Novel". He has edited more than two dozen anthologies and is series editor of "Best British Short Stories" for Salt, who also published his books-about-books, "White Spines: Confessions of a Book Collector" and "Shadow Lines: Searching For the Book Beyond the Shelf". In 2009 he founded Nightjar Press, which continues to publish original short stories in the form of limited-edition chapbooks. He lives in Manchester and London.
Jay Barnett grew up in Macclesfield, Cheshire. He is now based in London, where he completed his Creative Writing MA at Birkbeck. For a decade he has worked in the post room of an investment bank. His work has been broadcast on BBC Radio 4 and has appeared in Hamish Hamilton's "Five Dials" magazine, in Birkbeck's "Mechanics Institute Review" and in "Jawbreakers", the first National Flash-Fiction Day anthology.
Peter Bradshaw is an author and journalist and has been chief film critic for the "Guardian" since 1999. He has published three novels, "Lucky Baby Jesus" (1999), "Dr Sweet and His Daughter" (2003) and "Night of Triumph" (2013). He has also written and performed the Radio 4 serial "For One Horrible Moment" and the Sky TV situation comedy "Baddiel's Syndrome". He is married with a son and lives in London.
Rosalind Brown was born in 1987 and grew up in Cambridge. She is a graduate of the University of East Anglia's Creative Writing MA, and now lives and works in Norwich.
Krishan Coupland's stories and poems have been published in "Ambit", "Aesthetica", "Brittle Star", "Fractured West" and "Litro". His story 'Days Necrotic' was joint winner of the Manchester Fiction Prize 2011; he has also won the Bare Fiction Prize and been shortlisted for the Bristol Short Story Prize "Wasafiri" New Writing Prize, and "Storgy" short story competition. His work has also been highly commended in the "Harper's Bazaar" short story competition, selected for the Best of the Net Anthology, and nominated for a Pushcart Prize.
Claire Dean's short stories have been published in "The Best British Short Stories 2011" and "2014", as well as in "Still, Shadows & Tall Trees", "Patricide", "A cappella Zoo" and as chapbooks by Nightjar Press. Her first collection, "The Museum of Shadows and Reflections" (Unsettling Wonder), with illustrations by Laura Rae, was published in 2016. She lives in Lancashire with her two young sons. Two new stories are forthcoming from Nightjar Press in 2017.
Niven Govinden is the author of four novels, most recently "All the Days and Nights", longlisted for the Folio Prize and shortlisted for the Green Carnation Prize. "Black Bread, White Beer" was selected as one of the Fiction Uncovered titles in 2013. His second novel, "Graffiti My Soul", is to be filmed. His short stories have been published internationally and his novels have been translated into numerous languages.
Françoise Harvey has had work published in "Loss Lit", "Bare Fiction", "Synaesthesia Magazine" and "Litro", as well as in the anthologies "The Best New British and Irish Poets 2016" and the Bristol Short Story Prize Anthology Volume 9. She has been shortlisted for the Bridport Prize and is one of the founders of short-story collective Literary Salmon.
Andrew Michael Hurley is the author of two short story collections, "Cages" and "The Unusual Death of Julie Christie". His first novel, "The Loney", was originally published in 2014 by Tartarus Press and then by John Murray a year later, after which it won the 2015 Costa First Novel award and the 2016 British Book Industry award for Debut Novel and Book of the Year. He lives in Lancashire with his family and teaches creative writing at Manchester Metropolitan University's Manchester Writing School. His second novel, "Devil's Day", will be published by John Murray in autumn 2017.
Daisy Johnson was born in 1990 and currently lives in Oxford. Her short fiction has appeared in the Boston Review and the "Warwick Review", among others. In 2014, she was the recipient of the AM Heath prize. "Fen" is her first collection of stories. Her debut novel will be published by Jonathan Cape in 2018.
