Best British Short Stories 2020

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.

RICHARD LAWRENCE BENNETT is a writer and psychogeographer based in Arundel, West Sussex. His work has been published in Ambit and in the Lounge Companion. He is seeking representation for his debut novel The Ramayana of Croydon about mysticism in south London. You can find out more about him at www.richardlawrencebennett.com.

LUKE BROWN is the author of the novels My Biggest Lie (2014) and Theft (2020). He grew up on the coast of Lancashire and works as an editor in London as well as teaching at the University of Manchester. 'Beyond Criticism' was shortlisted and commended for Best Original Fiction in the Stack Awards 2019.

David Constantine, born 1944 in Salford, has published several volumes of poetry, a novel and four collections of short stories - Back at the Spike (1994), Under the Dam (2005), The Shieling (2009) and Tea at the Midland (2012). He is an editor and translator of Hölderlin, Goethe, Kleist and Brecht. He was the winner of the 2010 BBC National Short Story Award and the 2013 Frank O'Connor Award.

Tim Etchells is an artist and writer based in Sheffield and London. His work shifts between performance, visual art and fiction. As well as being Professor of Performance and Writing at Lancaster University, he works in a wide variety of contexts, notably as the leader of Sheffield performance group Forced Entertainment. His 2019 collection "Endland" (And Other Stories) was a reprise (plus new stories) of his 1999 collection "Endland Stories" (Pulp Books). He was the winner of the 2019 Manchester Fiction Prize.

NICOLA FREEMAN started out in arts journalism and publishing and has since worked as a curator, writer and editor in museums and galleries. She has invited contemporary artists of all disciplines to respond to museum collections, including established and emerging writers. She is a Jerwood/Arvon mentee (fiction) 2019/20. 'Halloween' is her first published short story.

Amanthi Harris was born in Sri Lanka and grew up in London. She studied Fine Art at Central St Martins and has degrees in Law and Chemistry from Bristol University. Her novella "Lantern Evening" won the Gatehouse Press New Fictions Prize 2016 and is published by Gatehouse Press (2017). Her short stories have been published by Serpent's Tail and broadcast on BBC Radio 4 as Afternoon Readings.

Andrew Hook has had over a hundred and fifty short stories published, with several novels, novellas and collections also in print. Stories have appeared in magazines ranging from "Ambit" to "Interzone". Recent books are a collection of mostly SF stories, "Frequencies of Existence", and "O For Obscurity, Or, The Story of N", a fictionalised biography of the Mysterious N Senada written in collaboration with the legendary San Francisco art collective, The Residents.

SONIA HOPE's short fiction has appeared in magazines including Ambit, Nottingham Review and Ellipsis Zine. She is a Jerwood/Arvon Mentee (Fiction) 2019/20 and was shortlisted for the Guardian 4th Estate BAME Short Story Prize 2019. She is a Librarian and lives in London.

HANIF KUREISHI has published eight novels, including, most recently, The Nothing. His most recent book, What Happened?, a collection of stories and essays, was published in 2019. Born in Kent, he now lives in London.