Two UEA writers have been included on the all-female shortlist of five in contention for this year’s Edge Hill Short Story Prize. KJ (Katherine) Orr is nominated for her debut collection Light Box (Daunt) while Joanna Walsh is nominated for her second collection Vertigo (And Other Stories). Katherine (pictured) graduated from the UEA MA in Creative Writing (Prose Fiction) in 2007 and subsequently completed a PhD in Creative and Critical Writing at the University of Chichester. ‘Disappearances’, a story taken from Light Box, was the winner of the 2016 BBC National Short Story Award, for which Katherine was previously shortlisted in 2011. She currently teaches on the MA and MFA in Creative Writing at UEA. Joanna is currently completing a PhD in Creative and Critical Writing at UEA, exploring the possibilities of digital narrative. Her digital novella Seed was recently published by Visual Editions, and earlier this year she won an Arts Foundation Fellowship in the Creative Non-Fiction category. Her first book Fractals was published by 3:AM Press in 2013 and has been followed by Grow a Pair (2015), Vertigo (2015), and Hotel (2015). The winner of the Edge Hill Short Story Prize, which is worth £10,000, will be announced at the Edinburgh International Book Festival on 26th August. There will also be a £1,000 Reader’s Choice Award to an author from the shortlist.
KJ Orr and Joanna Walsh shortlisted for Edge Hill Short Story Prize
