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For 2023! Meet Our 6 New Academy Writers

The Northern Short Story Festival Academy is delighted to announce that a further 6 promising writers are to join its now well-established Academy programme in 2023. Since its inception in 2018 the Academy has been supporting and championing writers in Yorkshire, helping them to hone their craft through monthly workshops where they have the chance to read and critique each other’s short stories. The Academy has already supported 24 Yorkshire […]

Join The Northern Short Story Festival and Comma Press for The Dinesh Allirajah 2022 Prize-giving

Featuring all eight shortlistees of the 2022 prize, crime writer and judge Karline Smith and a special appearance from 2021 winner Isha Karki. On the 25th of May 2022 join Comma Press and The Northern Short Story Festival online for The Dinesh Allirajah 2022 prize-giving. This year the shortlist has been passed on to a panel of esteemed judges including successful crime writer, Karline Smith; editor at Northodox Press, specialising […]

Merry Christmas From the Thompsons!

41 The Scrubbins Todmorden Dear everyone, A joyful and merry festive season to you all. What a year it has been! For the Family Thompson – Colin, Helen, and sons Tom and David – this has been a year of highs and lows. Christmas 2019, when Colin had just lost his job, was a low point for us. Little did any of us know back then how much worse things […]

Making Short Stories Pay with Dan Micklethwaite

In part one of ‘Making Short Stories Pay’, we asked Bluemoose Books Dan Micklethwaite, who writes short stories in a shed in West Yorkshire, and who has published over 50 pieces of published short fiction, including in international pro-paying markets, how an author might make a living from their craft. Part of the Northern Short Story’s online festival this year, part 2 of Making Short Stories Pay takes place on […]

Northern Short Story Festival in-person festival postponed until October

We are sorry to tell you that we have made the decision to postpone this summers’ Northern Short Story Festival. The Festival was due to take place on the 30th and 31st May, but due to the current Coronavirus outbreak, which we understand may continue on into the Summer, we have taken the decision to postpone. We will instead be offering a programme of virtual events the weekend of 30th […]

Into Reality: new creative non-fiction by an NHS nurse

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 […]

Writer Alison Littlewood tells us about her favourite horror

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 […]

Northern Short Story Festival 2019 Programme Announced

  We are thrilled to announce this year’s Northern Short Story Festival programme. Taking place on Friday 31st May – Sunday 2nd June, the fourth Northern Short Story Festival takes place at Carriageworks Theatre. It has workshops, performances, social events, a Flash Fiction slam and a FREE “Blankety Blank” themed afterparty. There really is something for everyone! Tickets start at £4 / Free, with a Saturday day ticket (which gets […]

Flash Fiction Slam 2017 winner Phil Olsen on impressing the judges

At The Northern Short Story Festival Flash Fiction Slam, flash fiction writers compete to win prizes, glory, and the respect of their peers, by reading their shortest stories of 5 minutes or under, out loud to an audience. Winners get a bundle of books, publication on the Northern Short Story Festival website, a detailed story critique by Strix editor SJ Bradley, and a coveted and hotly-contested place in the Flash […]