STOP PRESS

Join Writers, Avril Joy, winner of the inaugural Costa Short Story Award 2013 and John Price,
reading from their work in the recently published
Iron Press anthology Root, Wednesday 10th April, 7.00 pm,
Bishop Auckland Town Hall Library,
Free Event

For further details contact BA Town Hall (01388)602610

ROOT is an anthology of new short fiction from writers based in North East England. Edited by novelist and award- winning short-story writer, Kitty Fitzgerald;

‘a writer of stylistic daring who cuts her own furrow.’ – The Scotsman

• Writers include: Avril Joy (winner of the Costa Short Story Award 2012), Fiona Cooper, Amanda Baker, Rob Walton, Angela Readman.

Root is a collection of short stories, which re-affirm the North East’s status as a vibrant area for new writing. The subjects of the 13 stories on show here range from the domestic – family relationships, gardening, bullying, adoption and loss – to the plain bizarre: a circus bearded lady, a woman who morphs into Elvis, and an insight into what God wears to work.

Kitty Fitzgerald was born in Ireland, and now lives in Northumberland.

She has edited two previous anthologies of short fiction for Iron Press: Iron Women: New Stories by Women (1990; ISBN 9780906228340) and Biting Back: New Fiction from the North (2001; ISBN 9780906228760).

Her short-story collection Miranda’s Shadow, which will be published by IRON Press in June 2013

Costa Joy

Room To Write and Read is delighted to announce that North East writer, our associate Avril Joy, has been named as the winner of the Costa Short Story Award for her short story Millie and Bird. 

Avril Joy - winner of the Costa Short Story Award

Costa Short Story Award - Over 1800 entries were received in this new competition, open to both published and non-published writers, for a single, previously-unpublished short story of up to 4,000 words by an author aged 18 years or over and written in English. 

The identities of the winner of the Short Story Award and the two runners-up, together with the overall Costa Book of the Year winner, were announced at the Costa Book Awards ceremony in London on Tuesday, 29^th January.

 Extract from Millie and Bird by Avril Joy

"It was the kind of summer when the grass grew too long to cut and your toes stubbed at the damp end of your trainers, the summer I was sixteen. It rained all through May and June. It rained on my birthday. It never let up and the weeds in the yard grew taller than the gate post. Jonty Angel, our next-door neighbour, gave Millie the bird that summer, a white zebra finch, and she spent all her time coaxing it onto her shoulder, whispering to it and feeding it titbits. He gave her a cage too and she put it in her bedroom out of harm’s way. It was the summer of Bird, it was the summer I fell in love..."

Hilary Mantel won the overall Costa Book of the Year Award - see Wendy's commentary at the Reviews and Commentaries tab