We are delighted that Angela Graham's debut short story collection A City Burning has been longlisted for the Edge Hill Short Story Prize 2021. 

The prestigious award, now in its fifteenth year, is the only national literary award to recognise excellence in a published, single-authored short story collection. 

The 15-strong longlist represents an exciting range of new writing from the UK and Ireland. 

Billy Cowan, organiser of the prize, said: “Although it has been a tough year for the publishing industry, it is great to see the short story in such a healthy state with more collections entered this year than 2020. This made the longlisting process very difficult as there were many, many strong entries. Our team of readers finally narrowed it down to a list of fifteen writers that include two previous Edge Hill Prize winners as well as many new writers with first collections by small independent publishers.”

Mick Felton, publisher at Seren, added: "I’m absolutely delighted to see Angela Graham’s A City Burning on the Edge Hill Prize longlist. To be with so many emminent practitioners is a great achievement for a debut collection. We knew A City Burning is outstanding so it’s great to have this recognition."

The judges of the 2021 prize are 2020 winner Shelley Day, literary agent Elise Dillsworth and Dr Kim Wiltshire, writer and senior lecturer in Creative Writing at Edge Hill University. 

A short list will be announced by September, with the winner of the £10,000 prize announced in November. A £1,000 Reader’s Choice Award will also be presented to one of the shortlisted authors.

The longlist in full is:

Alice Ash Paradise Block (Profile/Serpent’s Tail)
Annabel Banks Exercises in Control (Influx)
Kevin Barry That Old Country Music (Canongate)
Adrian Duncan Midfield Dynamo (Lilliput Press) 
Angela Graham A City Burning (Seren)
Rosanna Hildyard Slaughter (Broken Sleep Books) 
Rosemary Jenkinson Lifestyle Choice 10MG (Doire Press) 
A L Kennedy We are Attempting to Survive our Time (Jonathan Cape)
Louise Kennedy The End of the World is a Cul-de-Sac (Bloomsbury) 
Jo Lloyd The Earth, that Great Exchequer, Ready Lies (Swift Press)
Graham Mort Like Fado (Salt)
John O’Donnell Almost the Same Blue and other stories (Doire Press)
Alexandros Plasatis Made by Sea and Wood in Darkness (Spuyten Duyvil)
Fernando Sdrigotti Jolts (Influx)
Hannah Vincent She-Clown (Myriad Editions)

A City Burning is available on the Seren website as both paperback and eBook.

Find out more about the prize on the Edge Hill University website.