Nicholas Royle - Best British Short Stories 2017

BEST BRITISH SHORT STORIES 2017

The nations favourite annual guide to the short story, now in its seventh year.

Best British Short Stories invites you to judge a book by its cover or more accurately, by its title. This critically acclaimed series aims to reprint the best short stories published in the previous calendar year by British writers, whether based in the UK or elsewhere. The editors brief is wide ranging, covering anthologies, collections, magazines, newspapers and web sites, looking for the best of the bunch to reprint all in one volume.

Featuring stories by Jay Barnett, Peter Bradshaw, Rosalind Brown, Krishan Coupland, Claire Dean, Niven Govinden, Franoise Harvey, Andrew Michael Hurley, Daisy Johnson, James Kelman, Giselle Leeb, Courttia Newland, Vesna Main, Eliot North, Irenosen Okojie, Laura Pocock, David Rose, Deirdre Shanahan, Sophie Wellstood and Lara Williams.

PRAISE FOR BEST BRITISH SHORT STORIES

This annual feast satisfies again. Time and again, in Royles crafty editorial hands, closely observed normality yields (as Nikesh Shuklas spear-fisher grasps) to the things we cannot control. Boyd Tonkin, The Independent

Nicholas Lezards paperback choice: Hilary Mantels fantasia about the assassination of Margaret Thatcher leads this years collection of familiar and lesser known writers. Nicholas Lezard, The Guardian

Another effective and well-rounded short story anthology from Salt keep up the good work, we say! Sarah-Clare Conlon, Bookmunch

Its so good that its hard to believe that there was no equivalent during the 17 years since Giles Gordon and David Hughess Best English Short Stories ceased publication in 1994. The first selection makes a very good beginning Highly Recommended. Kate Saunders, The Times

When an anthology limits itself to a particular vintage, you hope its a good year. The Best British Short Stories 2014 from Salt Publishing presupposes a fierce selection process. Nicholas Royle is the author of more than 100 short stories himself, the editor of sixteen anthologies and the head judge of the Manchester Fiction Prize, which inspires a sense of confidence in his choices. He has whittled down this years crop to 20 pieces, which should enable everyone to find a favourite. Furthermore, his introduction points us towards magazines and small publishers producing the collections from which these pieces are chosen. If you like short stories but dont know where to find them, this book is a gateway to wider reading. Lucy Jeynes, Bare Fiction

Best British Short Stories 2017

NICHOLAS ROYLE is the author of more than 150 short stories, two novellas and seven novels, most recently First Novel (Vintage). His first short story collection, Mortality (Serpents Tail), was shortlisted for the inaugural Edge Hill Prize; his second, Ornithology (Confingo Publishing), was published in spring 2017. He has edited twenty anthologies of short stories, including six earlier volumes of Best British Short Stories . A senior lecturer in creative writing at the Manchester Writing School at Manchester Metropolitan University and head judge of the Manchester Fiction Prize, he also runs Nightjar Press, publishing original short stories as signed, limited-edition chapbooks.

Also by Nicholas Royle:

novels

Counterparts

Saxophone Dreams

The Matter of the Heart

The Directors Cut

Antwerp

Regicide

First Novel

novellas

The Appetite

The Enigma of Departure

short stories

Mortality

In Camera (with David Gledhill)

Ornithology

anthologies (as editor)

Darklands

Darklands

A Book of Two Halves

The Tiger Garden: A Book of Writers Dreams

The Time Out Book of New York Short Stories

The Ex Files: New Stories About Old Flames

The Agony & the Ecstasy: New Writing for the World Cup

Neonlit: Time Out Book of New Writing

The Time Out Book of Paris Short Stories

Neonlit: Time Out Book of New Writing Volume

The Time Out Book of London Short Stories Volume

Dreams Never End

: New Stories From Children of the Revolution

The Best British Short Stories 2011

Murmurations: An Anthology of Uncanny Stories About Bird s

The Best British Short Stories 2012

The Best British Short Stories 2013

The Best British Short Stories 2014

Best British Short Stories 2015

Best British Short Stories 2016

Published by Salt Publishing Ltd

International House, 24 Holborn Viaduct, London EC1A 2BN United Kingdom

All rights reserved

Introduction and selection copyright Nicholas Royle, 2017 Individual contributions copyright the contributors, 2017

The right of Nicholas Royle to be identified as the editor of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with Section 77 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

This book is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take place without the written permission of Salt Publishing.

Salt Publishing 2017

Created by Salt Publishing Ltd

This book is sold subject to the conditions that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publishers prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

ISBN 978-1-78463-113-0 electronic

To the memory of Alex Hamilton 19302016

Introduction

Nicholas Royle

O ne of my online students, meeting me recently for the first time, told me I am much less cantankerous in person than I am online. Or in print, she could perhaps have added. Since the appearance of the 2016 volume in this series I have been publicly ridiculed by the target of a poison-tipped arrow I launched in last years introduction. Steven OBrien, editor of the London Magazine , attacked me where it hurts, i.e. online where everyone can read it having reacted to my criticising him for publishing his own work in the publication he edits. He didnt mention this fact in his witty takedown, which made me wonder if he did feel a little embarrassed, after all. But why should he, Im now thinking? Hes only showing that hes imbibed the zeitgeist, that hes part of the selfie generation.

Hes certainly far from alone. Of the fourteen anthologies published last year that are still sitting on my desk as I write this introduction, five feature stories by their editors. Those five range from the smallest, most modest publication, put together to benefit a refugee charity, to probably the biggest, most prestigious anthology of 2016, whose editors, strangely, are not credited until we get to the title page. But then, it should perhaps be noted, there is a tendency for stories by editors, in the small sample under review, to be among the longer stories in the book in each case.

Theres no getting away from the fact that 2016 was a terrible year, not only for Britain and Europe, but also America and the entire world. If we can forget Brexit and Trump for a moment, however, 2016 was a good year for the short story. Even as I make such a claim, in the light of the enormity of contextual events, it seems ridiculous to do so. In 2017, perhaps, short story writers will respond to the electoral upheavals of the previous year. Maybe they will be invited to respond, if anyone is putting together a Brexit anthology (horrible thought) or a Trump book (ugh). The themed anthologies of 2016 required contributors to seek inspiration from undelivered or missing post ( Dead Letters edited by Conrad Williams for Titan Books), to commune with the spirit of either Cervantes or Shakespeare ( Lunatics, Lovers and Poets edited by Daniel Hahn and Margarita Valencia for And Other Stories), to ponder the nature of finality ( The End: Fifteen Endings to Fifteen Paintings edited by Ashley Stokes for Unthank Books), to imagine oneself an untrustworthy reporter on the capital ( An Unreliable Guide to London edited by Kit Caless, assisted by Gary Budden, for Influx Press) or to get to grips with the big subjects of any and every year ( Sex & Death edited by Sarah Hall and Peter Hobbs for Faber & Faber). In addition to the stories from these anthologies that are included in the present volume, I particularly enjoyed Deborah Levys The Glass Woman and Rhidian Brooks The Anthology Massacre in Lunatics, Lovers and Poets and Staples Corner (and How We Can Know It) by Gary Budden and M John Harrisons Babies From Sand in An Unreliable Guide to London .