A. J. Ashworth, "Maybe the Birds"

A. ‎J. Ashworth is the author of the short story collection Somewhere Else, or Even Here, which won The Scott Prize and was shortlisted in the Edge Hill Prize. The Times Literary Supplement said that her work "displays impressive versatility" and that her stories "do not progress so much as accrue, collecting incidental detail that enriches the scenarios without pointing towards their resolution." She is the editor of Red Room: New Short Stories Inspired by the Brontës, which was her own idea to raise funds for The Brontë Birthplace Trust. She has a PhD in Creative Writing from Edge Hill University and works as an associate editor of the journal Short Fiction in Theory and Practice. Maybe the Birds is her second collection and features "Leather" which was selected for Best British Short Stories.

About Maybe the Birds, by A. J. Ashworth
After the apocalypse destroys most life on Earth, a woman makes artificial bird voiceboxes to try to keep birdsong alive. A young female vampire uses her knowledge of mirrors to save her village from the man who turned her. A woman haunted by her past feels that the robins she has always loved are no longer her friends. These fourteen stories, largely speculative in nature, consider what happens when the world is no longer as it used to be – whether in the postapocalyptic future, the paleolithic past or the dark north of the present. The collection is interested in love and loss, families and foes, as well as moments of disconnection and connection. All are interested in what it means to be alive in very difficult times.

You can read more about Maybe the Birds on the publisher's website here. Below, you can read an excerpt from one of the stories. 

From Maybe the Birds

From the title story "Maybe the Birds"

I watch the dog. The dog watches something through the patio doors to the backyard. Every now and then his head tilts to one side in the way it does when I talk to him or sing to him. Although there is no sound that would make him do that now. Not that I can make out anyway. But dogs have better hearing, don’t they? They hear things no human ear is capable of detecting.

Like dog whistles.

The low growl of thunder from five miles away.

A million voices screaming from the other side of the world.

Maybe the birds are singing but I just can’t hear them. Maybe there is someone out there shuffling about. Maybe, maybe ... But this is all just wishful thinking – the birds, someone being out there. It’s the way your mind gets in the quiet. He’s probably just got his eyes on all the brown leaves in the yard and wondering why they’re there. "Why all these brown leaves in the spring, Ma?" I imagine him asking in the human voice I have given to him. But I haven’t got any answers. None that he would understand anyway. And so I keep quiet, and just carry on watching as he tilts his head the other way. Not once looking at me. Eyes full on whatever has got his attention through the grey dust coating the glass on the patio door. The little dots of his pupils as black as the night used to be.

Gus Gresham, "Angel Reach"

 

Fresh from ditching an engineering career in the early 1980s, Gus Gresham found his road guru and lifelong friend Laurie lying stoned and unconscious at the edge of a vineyard in the afternoon sun, an empty Beaujolais bottle in the grass and a Jack Kerouac novel spread-eagled on his chest …

They picked grapes in the same picturesque French villages; laboured in olive groves on Crete and pumpkin paddocks in New South Wales; sought enlightenment in India and did the Auf Wiedersehen Pet bit on building sites in Germany. They followed seasonal work doing pretty much everything from thousand-acre wheat harvests to beachcombing. They slept in cornfields and woke up at dawn to wash their faces in the morning dew and start hitchhiking …

Alongside hard travelling, Gus always had a passion for writing, and somehow in between it all he has been a mechanical engineer, environmental activist, English tutor, audio-book producer, interpersonal-skills facilitator, and mature student (MA in Creative Writing; MSc in Building Surveying). Currently, he juggles a building-surveying career with being a husband, father and writer.

His short stories have appeared in literary magazines and online. He is author of the novel Kyiv Trance and author of the young adult novels Earthrise and Marmalade Skies. Angel Reach collects his short stories from across 30 years; some are from those intervening decades, others are fresh off the press.

About Angel Reach, by Gus Gresham
Angel Reach explores the human condition through flawed characters whose vital, often strange journeys may bring them happiness or ruin.

In the north of England, a visit from a tall man who smells of rust could be the antidote for Emily’s reclusiveness. But how can you trust somebody if you’ve never seen their eyes? 
A young man who lives in a Manhattan attic may be a prophet or lunatic. In parallel, a young woman takes on social injustice wherever she encounters it. While neither have much regard for their own safety, they inevitably affect the lives of others. What will become of Tabbie and Finn? And what will happen when their paths cross?

Struggling over the death of a child, a man haunts Venice in a modern-day tribute to Daphne du Maurier’s "Don’t Look Now."

On the west coast of Ireland, a bully finds personal and perhaps universal truth.

In an imagined Slavic folktale, Agata faces unimaginable challenges as she searches for the key to her life.

An astronaut is locked in an illuminating battle for survival on an exo-planet.

Below, you can read an excerpt from one of the stories. 

From Angel Reach

One Last Look

I wander the moonlit grounds with a bullet in my chest. No pain, just the bullet. How did that happen?

Has she got snipers on the roof now?

I watch the blood pumping out of the hole in clotted gobs that rhyme with my heartbeat. And even at this juncture, I think about some of the rare, good moments I’ve had with Charlie.

Go, I tell myself. Just go. She’ll be all right.

But I turn back to the house. There’s a light on in the dining-room and Charlie’s sitting alone at the table. I press my face to the glass.

She looks up. For a second, her expression is cold. Then she smiles. Crosses to the window. Opens it. She laughs as I jump through and land on the bare boards.

"You can’t do it," she says. "We belong."

She raises a crooked finger, pokes it in the hole in my chest and wiggles it about. It feels … okay. I put my hands round her waist. With her body against mine, the old chemistry pops and fizzes. In my peripheral vision, shadowy figures pass by outside.

"Don’t worry about them," she says. "Glass of wine?"

We sit across from each other at the mirror-top table. Our faces are distorted and ugly in the reflection. Charlie’s eyes are soot-black as she pours black wine from a black bottle into black glasses.

"I can’t stay long," I say.

She shrugs, and traces patterns on the table with a fingernail. My eyes begin to water, and my nostrils feel harsh. Uncontrollable laughter warbles out of me.

"What?" she says.

"Laughing at myself," I say. "Sitting here with a bullet in my chest and I was just worrying that I might be coming down with a cold."

"Another one?" she says. "Don’t give it to me."

I hear a dull, erratic thumping. I think it’s my heart giving out, but it’s noises from upstairs. Military boots? The butts of automatic weapons striking the floor? And something big is being dragged into position. Furniture? Torture equipment? From a crack in the ceiling, a ribbon of pale dust comes powdering down through the air.

Mona Dash, "Map of the Self"

Mona Dash is an award-winning author based in London. Her work includes her memoir A Roll of the Dice, a short story collection Let Us Look Elsewhere, a novel Untamed Heart and two collections of poetry, A Certain Way and Dawn Drops. She has been published in various journals and more than thirty-five anthologies. Her short stories have been listed in leading competitions such as Asian Writer (winner), Bath, Bristol, Fish, to name a few. She has been shortlisted, and more than once, in various literary awards such as Eastern Eye ACTA, SI Leeds Literary award, Eyelands Literary Award (winner for Roll of the Dice), Tagore Literary Prize and Novel London.  Her short story "Twenty-five years" was presented on BBC Radio 4 and the title story of Let Us Look Elsewhere was included in Best British Short Stories 22. She also works as a business leader in AI for a global tech company. More details on her website here and you can also follow her on Instagram at @monadash_ 

Map of the Self is her newly published collection of poetry.

About Map of the Self, by Mona Dash
Map of the Self is a poetic atlas for anyone seeking home — within and beyond themselves.

In this new collection of poems, Mona Dash traces the intricate landscapes of identity, belonging, and human connection. She explores memory, language, and the shifting borders of selfhood and then explores how the self is shaped and reshaped in relation to others: in love and loss, in intimacy and estrangement, in family and society.

Whether navigating the dislocations of diaspora or the quiet revelations of everyday life, Dash writes with a voice that is both intimate and expansive. She invites the reader to walk alongside her, to pause at key moments along the way, and perhaps to reimagine parts of their own story.

You can read more about Map of the Self on the publisher's website here. Below, you can read three sample poems from the collection. 

From Map of the Self

Implications

Born and raised an Indian; not living in India
                                                 implied: not Indian
 

now British, not born in Britain 
                                                 implied: not British
a mother, working full-time
                                                 implied: not a mother
a sales manager, a mother 
                                                 implied: not a sales manager
a woman, a mother
                                                 implied: not a woman
an engineer, a poet
                                                 implied: not an engineer
 
In becoming more than I was meant to
                                                 implied: a sense of erosion
Venn-diagram like I seek 
                                                 implied: commonalities 
finding intersectionality 
                                                 implied: a pinpoint

 
Turmeric

On shop shelves, flavours of peach and turmeric, in little Kefir shots
Cranberry seeds and turmeric, masks and masques in recyclable pots
           Some love yellow milk, drink an aphrodisiac in a tall glass
           steam fish soft in thin gravy, liquid gold on shining white rice
 
Turmeric tastes on the tongue, lingering in infinite swirls
like Jazz, Renaissance, the Beat, a turmeric rage grows 
           in homes, health shops, the patents, the recipes, lotions
           on skin everywhere, in all its fine avatars

But I remember it on my mother’s fingers, her tiny nails
bitten to the quick, haldi, turmeric stains on the nail bed and folds
           from mixing fish-heads, pumpkin flowers with turmeric
           Yellow stains left on handles and plates and clothes

like on this scarf, her fingertips, yellow dots, from far-away home.
 

Drown

You didn’t say a thing.
You didn’t do a thing.
Those curious eyes watched.
Not sure why,
not sure what they thought.

I drowned. I struggled. 
Thrashing as the water rose
in waves and whirlpools
I sank, you watched
You who had said, water
fall in, feel it, let go!
I did,
And you let me down.

The moon, your friend, is glistening low
It doesn’t let me see the shore
But somewhere a lighthouse glows
Surely it will carry me through to morning
When at last the daylight shows.

Elleke Boehmer, "Ice Shock"

 

Elleke Boehmer is the author of a wide range of books including fiction, biography, award-winning history and literary criticism. She has published five novels to date, including Screens Against the Sky (short-listed David Higham Prize, 1990), and The Shouting in the Dark (co-winner of the EASA Olive Schreiner Prize, 2015). Her two short-story collections are Sharmilla, and Other Portraits (2010), and To the Volcano (2019, with "Supermarket Love" commended for the Australian Review of Books Elizabeth Jolley Prize). Her work has been translated into many languages, including German, Dutch, Portuguese, Italian, Arabic, Thai and Mandarin. Her novels Bloodlines (2000) and Nile Baby (2008) were published in Mandarin in China in 2024. Her website is here.

About Ice Shock, by Elleke Boehmer
The year is 2010. An Icelandic volcano has thrown an ash cloud into the atmosphere and, across the world, planes have stopped flying. Leah and Niall, twenty-somethings in love, find themselves strangely restless, and set out on different but parallel paths; Niall travels to a polar station in Antarctica, where the strange, lonely beauty of the ice mirrors the fragility of his hopes, while Leah studies writing in England, surrounded by tradition yet struggling to find her place.

Separated by thousands of miles, but determined to stay connected, they learn that true communication can be as fragile as the melting landscape between them. Ice Shock is a love story that asks what it means to stay close even when we are far apart – and how love can endure, in a world changing catastrophically by the day.

You can read more about Ice Shock on the publisher's website here. Below, you can read an excerpt from the novel. 

From Ice Shock
Leah Nash was not looking for love. Love was the last thing she needed. That winter morning, she wanted only to get out of town and head home.  

But then the trains south from Edinburgh were cancelled. Floods on the line. So here she was at the coach station, ten minutes to spare, dragging her backpack up into the London coach.

Yesterday’s interview had taken everything. It had felt like her life depended on the outcome—the fulfilment of every dream she’d ever had. The shelf of books she would one day write. 

But had they liked her? The seven blank faces at the long table gave away nothing. She had blundered on through, ears ringing.

"Sorry, could you repeat that, please?" she’d asked twice, three times. "I didn’t quite get the question." 

Niall Lawrence wasn’t looking for love either. Leant up against the coach window, he was trying to get home, too. Kent, via London. But he did like to be loved. That idea of a love-match, a soul-mate—this past weekend something had changed about that. He’d been up north for a school friend’s wedding. Steph, who was marrying Rosie. He’d watched the couple take their first dance, looking into each other’s eyes, faces glowing, never dropping their gaze, and he’d thought—amazing. 

So if someone this early morning had asked him about love—say this nameless stranger with red-brown hair in the seat beside his, asleep on his shoulder, uninvited—then he might have said yes, carefully. "But," he might have added, "I don’t think I’ve met them yet." 

The stranger stretched her arm across his waist.

Inside her evaporating sleep, the body under her arm was warm, warmer than her own. 

Niall felt her breath on his face, feathering his cheek.

A jolt. The coach engine coughed deep and low under their feet. Leah opened her eyes, rubbed her temple. She saw pale eyes, somehow bearably close-by. Curious, maybe quizzical. The man they belonged to must have been cradling her for some time. She was slumped half across his chest. 

Beyond his head, she saw London’s brown fuzz begin to thicken along the horizon.

Sarah James, "Darling Blue"

 

Sarah James (also published as S. A. Leavesley and Sarah Leavesley) is a prize-winning poet, fiction writer, journalist and photographer. Nine out of ten of her solo poetry titles have won or been shortlisted/highly commended for an award, including Darling Blue. Her many individual poem competition wins include the Pre-Raphaelite Society’s Poetry Prize 2024. Author of a touring poetry-play, an ACE-funded multi-media hypertext poetry narrative > Room and two novellas, she also runs V. Press, publishing poetry and flash fiction. Her website is here. Her substack is reedlike whispering through wind & water, here.

About Darling Blue, by Sarah James
Darling Blue interweaves ekphrastic poems with a book-length fictional poetry narrative of love, lust and letting go. The poems inspired by Pre-Raphaelite artworks include QR codes, which readers can scan to view the pieces after or alongside their reading. Blue here is more than a colour or inspiration; it is desire, secrecy and sorrow – the essence of "feeling / really alive," yet "distance’s illusion."

While the poems may be read sequentially to give a longer narrative, each one is also a complete  piece in itself, so that readers can dip in and out in any order they choose. Darling Blue was one of the two winners of the Geoff Stevens Memorial Poetry Prize 2024 and also features Sarah’s poems that won prizes in the 2022 and 2023 Pre-Raphaelite Society Poetry Competitions.

You can read more about Darling Blue on the publisher's website here. Below, you can read two sample poems from the collection. 

From Darling Blue

Bluebell Blue

          after ‘April Love’ by Arthur Hughes

In this painted pose, everything
except for her hair, face and arm
is the blue of a spring flower.
As if he’d picked the stem of her,
then let the dress shape a bell
around this green heart, drawing

up from the earth and turning
towards the sun. Only, her eyes
remain downcast, gazing into
the space of absence beside her.
The firm tree trunk at her back
is a tangled web of clinging ivy

and shadow, leaves twisting away
from their own heart shapes. Parted,
her lips open without budding. 
The fabric flow of her skirt’s silent
petalled bell is an un-swimmable ocean.
When she steps out of this scene,

this love, will she take her scarf
with her, clasped close as a dream?
Perhaps she will let it drop instead,
leaving its soft curves of sky and river 
to soak up more rain, another scrap of blue
slowly drowned by the weight of mud.

 
Your Fingers

At the hotel room, pressing your key card 
to the door, pushing open my heart. 

A gasp or two later, clicking off light 
and noise, turning on fires inside.

Tracing my lips like the brimming rim
of a wine glass learning how to sing.

Cat’s-cradling my head afterwards, while
I drink the bright sky from your eyes.

It takes hours for my breath to shrink
back to the size of your finger-tip;

I almost believe this moment could last
as long as my life, outrunning our pasts.

Then your fingers wake once more,
to tap-dance on your phone and reach for 

the remote.