Swansea-based author Roshi Fernando has been longlisted for a prestigious short story prize alongside the likes of Booker prize winner Hilary Mantel, Tibor Fischer and Susan Hill.

Roshi, whose work was first anthologised by Seren, is in contention for the 2011 Sunday Times EFG Bank Short Story Award, which is worth £30,000 to the winner.

Roshi has been nominated for her story 'The Fluorescent Jacket', part of her first Homesick which won the Inpress Prize for New Writers in 2009 and was published by Inpress last year. The novel is a composite of seventeen interwoven short stories about a sommunity of Sri Lankan immigrants carving out new lives in a hostile Britain.

"Three Cuts", her bloody retelling of the Cinderella story, was published last October in Seren anthology myth and horror stories Sing Sorrow Sorrow, edited by Gwen Davies.

Roshi, born in London 1966, is currently finishing a PhD in Creative Writing at Swansea University.

"The Flurescent Jacket" is one of twenty stories longlisted for the prize. for which the judges include Melvyn Bragg and AS Byatt. The shortlist will be announced on March 13, with the winner announced at the Sunday Times Oxford Literary Festival on April 8.