New Writing

Two UEA alumni have been included in the 12-strong longlist for this year’s £30,000 Sunday Times EFG Short Story Award. Rob Magnuson Smith is nominated for ‘The Elector of Nossnearly’ and Thomas Morris for ‘Clap Hands’. Rob graduated from the MA in Creative Writing (Prose Fiction) in 2009, when he was that year’s recipient of the David Higham Award. He subsequently completed a PhD in Creative Writing at Bath Spa University and now teaches English and Creative Writing at Exeter’s Penryn campus in Cornwall. His first novel The Gravedigger won the William Faulkner-William Wisdom Award and was published by the University of New Orleans Press in 2010, while his second novel Scorper was published by Granta last year. He was recently named as the winner of the 2015 Australian Book Review Elizabeth Jolley Short Story Prize. Thomas (pictured) graduated from the Creative Writing (Prose Fiction) MA in 2013 and published his debut collection of short stories, We Don’t Know What We’re Doing, last year. Currently the editor of the Irish literary journal The Stinging Fly, in 2014 he edited ‘Dubliners 100’, a centenary collection of new short stories by Irish writers based on James Joyce’s Dubliners. The winner of the Sunday Times EFG Short Story Award will receive £30,000, and the five other shortlisted writers will each receive £1,000. The shortlist will be announced on 20th March and the winner on 22nd April.