This year, the Northern Short Story Festival celebrates its fifth birthday, and we want you to join us! For the first time ever, no matter where you are in the world, you will be able to come to the festival. That’s because this year, our Summer festival will take place online. So if you have a device and an internet connection, you’ll be able to access our programme of workshops, […]
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We are proud to be part of #LeedsSaysThanks: arts organisations saying thank you to those key workers who have risked their lives and given their best during this current pandemic to keep us all safe. As a voluntary run organisation, we at the Northern Short Story Festival know how much a person gives by going above and beyond. That’s why we’re offering any keyworker – whether they’re an NHS […]
This Spring, The Northern Short Story Festival is proud to host two of Britain’s most unnerving short story writers, Jenn Ashworth and Andrew Michael Hurley, in Leeds’ most haunted surviving subscription library. Britain has a long history of folk tales, ghost stories and other uncanny fictions, and these literary ley lines are still shimmering beneath the surface of this green and pleasant land. Every few generations this strangeness crawls out […]
“Grab ‘em with your first sentence!” If your short story or novel demands to be heard, our First Page Competition could be the place for you. Your first page is crucial if you want to grab the attention of a time-strapped editor or agent. Whether you write horror, sci-fi, or literary fiction, make your opening snag our judges’ attention, and you could be our first ever First Page winner. Entrants […]
Our friends at Leeds Lit Fest launch their 2020 programme on Wednesday February 5th, and they can’t wait to tell you all about it. Come along to the glorious Leeds Minster, find out what the Festival is all about and enjoy readings from some of Leeds’ very own Peepal Tree Press authors including Khadijah Ibrahiim, Monique Roffey, Seni Seneviratne, Jacob Ross, Roger Robinson and Malika Booker. The event will be […]
We accepted the patient at five in the morning. He was blue-lighted thirty miles up the motorway from the hospital in his home town. It was a chest infection that had caused him to be admitted to a hospital ward, one like hospital wards everywhere: too busy, understaffed, caring in a haphazard institutional way. Easy for an elderly man, not wanting to bother people, to stand and trip and fall […]
It’s a complicated place, this. I like complicated places – and the fortunate thing is, it turns out that all places are complicated, if you look at them closely enough. Looking closely was what I was here to do: to look closely, and to share what I saw. More than once I had to explain that I wasn’t literally the ‘writer in residence’ here in the park. I mean, you […]
On Saturday 26th October, The Northern Short Story Festival is proud to present not one, but TWO acclaimed horror writers in conversation at FRIGHTFEST. Alison Littlewood, a Shirley Jackson Award winner, will be in conversation with Lucie McKnight Hardy, whose book Water Shall Refuse Them is out now, from Liverpool independent Dead Ink Books. Don’t miss this spectacular and spooktacular event. Tickets are £6, and as well as hearing these […]
This October, we’re proud to be hosting acclaimed horror writer Alison Littlewood, winner of the Shirley Jackson Award for Short Fiction. Her latest novel, Mistletoe, a winter ghost story, is published in October this year, and previous books have been selected for the Richard and Judy Book Club, and described as ‘perfect reading for a dark winter’s night.’ Her short stories have been picked for several year’s best anthologies, and […]
The Northern Short Story Festival is proud to announce its Autumn programme. With guided walks, workshops, Hallowe’en themed fancy dress, political writing and FRIGHTFEST minifestival to scare you silly, there’s plenty going on this October at the Northern Short Story Festival. Saturday October 19th: Guided walk & Creative Writing workshop, Middleton Park with Richard Smyth (FREE) We are over the moon to be announcing […]