Best British Short Stories 2020 Nicholas Royle (best way to read ebooks txt) 📖

burned or at least blistered. On the way to being meat. One arm was twisted under him unnaturally. He had been thrown or dragged there. He had not fallen like that. Where was Jack? Where were the apes? Edward could see Denny’s rifle propped by the door. He got the boy out of the fire. One side of him smouldered but the other side of his face was largely undamaged by the flames. The fire had not been fierce. Denny’s body must have put it out. The unburned profile was the wrong colour. Red, even purple, but not because of the fire. He might have been poisoned, Edward thought.

Edward knew Jack was down by the quay, but he felt sure he would never see him again. This part of the island was for the apes now.

Edward had been running as best he could until his legs would not carry him through the heather any farther. He had fallen more than once and his face stung with the cuts from the unforgiving woody stems. He had wanted to get to the quay but did not really know the best way from Jack’s house and he had not wanted to go via the compound because that was too far and perhaps for fear of what he might find there. Marcia had gone to the cliff-top or the seal beach.

He stumbled again. When he raised his head, that old female orangutan was looking into his watery eyes or off to the side of him as though she were blind. Her averted gaze allowed him to stare at her. She was beautiful. It was natural to love the apes, because they were beautiful. If this creature would come back to the compound with him, he would give her a nun’s name as he had with Grace and Charity and others. What would that be? This is what was happening, so he knew that it was what was meant to happen, what had been hoped for. He reached for her face, the moustacheless chin beard a little grey. He stroked the beautiful muzzle. He hoped he had been forgiven for slapping at her hand after his swim in the tarn. She touched his sharp cuts with the tips of her tough fingers, tenderly.

CONTRIBUTORS’ BIOGRAPHIES

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 has published several volumes of poetry and a novel, The Life-Writer, as well as four short story collections: Under the Dam (2005), The Shieling (2009), Tea at the Midland (2012) and The Dressing-Up Box (2019). With his wife Helen he edited Modern Poetry in Translation. In addition, he has translated the work of Hölderlin, Brecht, Goethe, Kleist, Michaux and Jaccottet. Born in Salford, he lives in Oxford.

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 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 the University of Bristol. Her novel, Beautiful Place, is published by Salt Publishing in the UK and Pan Macmillan India. Lantern Evening, a novella, won the Gatehouse Press New Fictions Prize 2016 and was published by Gatehouse Press. Her short stories have been published by Serpent’s Tail and broadcast on BBC Radio 4. www.amanthiharris.com

Andrew Hook has had over a hundred and fifty short stories published, with several novels, novellas and collections also in print. ‘The Girl With the Horizontal Walk’ is part of a series of ‘Hollywood celebrity death’ stories, Candescent Blooms, currently seeking a publisher. Stories from the series have appeared in Ambit and Great Jones Street. Forthcoming 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.

Helen Mort w as b orn i n S heffield a nd g rew u p i n Chesterfield. She has published two poetry collections, Division Street (2013), and No Map Could Show Them (2016), and one novel, Black Car Burning (2019). Her short story collection, Exire, was published by Wrecking Ball and she co-edited One For the Road: Pubs and Poetry (Smith-Doorstop) with Stuart Maconie. She teaches creative writing at Manchester Metropolitan University.

Jeff Noon is an award-winning novelist, short story writer and