"The Subtle Art of Short Fiction," ed. Isabelle Kenyon

About The Subtle Art of Short Fiction, ed. Isabelle Kenyon
The Subtle Art of Short Fiction explores the power of short fiction in today’s fragmented world. Renowned authors and critics offer advanced techniques for crafting nuanced, impactful stories.

Learn to master short story structure, subtext, micro-tension, and sensory minimalism. Ideal for experienced writers seeking to refine their skills in this sophisticated art form, or those who love short fiction, and want to learn about the craft behind it.

The book includes essays and writing exercises by Kerry Hadley-Pryce, Daisy Johnson, Matt Wesolowski, Sascha Akhtar, David Hartley, Mahsuda Snaith, Jonathan Taylor, Sarah Schofield, SJ Bradley and Farhana Shaikh, and has an introduction by Dr Paul March-Russell.

You can read more about The Subtle Art of Short Fiction on the publisher's website here. 

About the editor
Isabelle Kenyon is the Managing Director of Manchester publishing house Fly on the Wall Press, and was named a Leader of the Year by the Bookseller in 2025. Founded in 2018, she has led Fly on the Wall Press from Small Press of the Year finalist status at the British Book Awards 2021-23 to their win in the North, in 2024. She is the MA Module Leader for "Publishing in the 21st Century" at Arts University Bournemouth, and the author of psychological thriller The Dark Within Them and poetry collections including Growing Pains (Indigo Dreams).​ She previously coordinated the Northern Fiction Alliance and runs PR campaigns for writers and publishers under Kenyon Author Services. 

From The Subtle Art of Short Fiction

From The Art of Anticipation and Revelation

by Daisy Johnson

I have noticed something recently about children. It is the waiting that they love. My sons sit at the kitchen table watching me, spoons floating half way to their open mouths, eyes wide. I am doing something silly, making a noise or pretending to hide or doing a funny walk. Each time when I stop they call for me to do it again, again, again. I pretend not to, I cannot possibly, no, I am very busy, but they know I am lying. It is this moment of withholding that they find most joyous. The best short stories, for me, carve out most perfectly that delicious space of anticipation.

In Miranda July’s short story "The Metal Bowl," the protagonist describes herself acting in a porn video when she was younger. "I wasn’t directed so much as given a series of props to make my way through, like an obstacle course. A turquoise Teddy bear, a pillow, an empty beer bottle, a metal bowl. Not everything was clear to me (the bowl), but I was too nervous to speak." From this moment we move through the story with a growing question. What was the metal bowl for? The question is an elastic tension which connects us to the protagonist.

In Shirley Jackon’s "The Lottery," the very title of the story is a question which we go in asking: what is The Lottery? The people of a small village begin to gather in the square: "Bobby Martin had already stuffed his pockets full of stones, and the other boys soon followed his example." As with the mysterious metal bowl, we wonder, what are these stones for? Unlike July’s story it is clear that the characters know more than us, that the trembling, questioning tension belongs only to the reader ... 

K. C. Adams, "The Vampire's Revenge"

Kristina Adams is the author of 20 novels, 3 books for writers, 1 poetry collection, and too many blog posts to count. She publishes mother/daughter ghost stories as K. C. Adams. She also works part-time as a content marketer. When she’s not writing, she’s playing with her dog or inflicting cooking experiments on her boyfriend. 

About The Vampire's Revenge, by K. C. Adams
Is this family of ghost hunters about to become vampire prey?

Edie
Do I ever get a break? I’ve just been attacked by a knife-wielding weirdo and found out my new friend is a vampire. And now the bookshop has been vandalised.
But it turns out the vampire who trashed the bookshop murdered Maisie’s mum and turned her into a vampire. So now, she wants revenge.
And she wants my help to get it.
But how far will she go? And who’ll get caught in the crossfire?

Niamh
Fadil’s chronic pain is getting worse. He won’t let anyone help him, but it’s now so bad that some days he can’t even get out of bed.
Has being 4,000 years old finally caught up with him, or is something else going on? Do the answers lie in the normal or the paranormal? If we can’t convince him to get help, will he continue to get worse? And just how much worse could he get?

The Vampire’s Revenge is the eighth book in the Afterlife Calls series. It contains cave-dwelling vampires, a haunted bookshop, chronic pain representation, sassy pets, teenage angst and mid-life romance. Every book in the Afterlife Calls series contains a standalone mystery and threads that tie into a larger plot at the end of each part in the series.

You can read more about The Vampire's Revenge on the author's website here. Below, you can read an excerpt from the novel. 

From The Vampire's Revenge

From the Author's Note 

Whenever I tell someone I’m from Nottingham, they immediately think of Robin Hood. While Robin of Loxley may be the most well-known part of Nottingham history, there are far more interesting parts.

Underneath the city are (at the time of publication in 2025) over 900 documented caves. These are human made, carved out of the unique Sherwood Sandstone. What makes Sherwood Sandstone unique is its ability to hold its shape. Go a few miles to the west and the sand won’t hold its shape; go to the east and you won’t get through it without a drill.

Nottingham’s cave network was built by hand, which is another thing that makes it remarkable. While we don’t know the exact age of all the caves, some are thought to be around 3,000 years old – almost as old as Fadil! 

All the facts about the caves and the Goose Fair in this book are true. Except for the vampire part and the cave in which they live.

There are caves (and catacombs!) around the Church Rock Cemetery and Forest Recreation Ground which I’ve been fortunate enough to tour, but the one the vampires in Afterlife Calls inhabit is fictional. Most caves in Nottingham are quite small and unconnected. I needed something big and labyrinthine for them to live in, so I took some creative license with that part.

I grew up in a town similar to Hucknall, and my friends and I always complained that there was no interesting local history. But there probably was.

So much of our local history has already been lost. It’s really important to me that we preserve it, because we can learn so much from the lessons of the past. For example, the Luddites, something else Nottingham is famous for, didn’t rebel against the new technology in lacemaking their employers were bringing in. They rebelled against poor pay and working conditions. Sound familiar? Sound like it could be written now?

Everywhere has history. The problem is that local history just isn’t shared. If people don’t share it, it dies. Much like the origins of the catacombs in Nottingham, for example. We’ll never know if they really were carved out to house the dead and Notts folks got squeamish about it, or if it was just another excuse to mine sandstone. Personally I think the latter. The sand was an important part of local building and also exported for things like glassmaking. No one is giving up that lucrative business without a fight. They must’ve done eventually, though, as the city is no longer mined for sand.

If you want to find out more about the City of Caves, you can do a tour which will tell you about their history as homes, businesses, and even air raid shelters.

You can also walk down a cave called Mortimer’s Hole beside Nottingham Castle, which gave my legs a hell of a workout but was full of interesting stories of political intrigue.

Bert Flitcroft, "From Standing Stones to the Stars"

Bert Flitcroft was born and brought up in Lancashire but now lives in the Midlands. He now has four collections of poetry published: Singing Puccini at the Kitchen Sink, Thought-Apples, Just Asking, and Seeing the Light. Recently he has made available a fifth, a "new and selected" entitled From Standing Stones to the Stars: History and Science: 30 Poems.

He is an Arts Council prize-winning poet, was Poet in Residence at the Southwell Poetry Festival and has performed at a number of leading national festivals including The Edinburgh International Book Festival. He was Staffordshire Poet Laureate 2015–17 and curated the on-line Staffordshire Poetry Collection. 

He has worked as resident poet with one of our "National Treasures," The Wedgwood Collection at the V&A; as resident poet with the prestigious R.I.B.A. exhibition "The Road Less Travelled"; and recently as part of the University of Keele project "Labelling the Museum."

Bert offers a professional mentoring service and has a long and successful history of running workshops and giving readings, not just to local poetry groups but in libraries, arts centres, gardens, galleries, museums. His website is here. 

About From Standing Stones to the Stars, by Bert Flitcroft

This collection  includes a few new poems alongside poems published in Bert’s first four collections. Glancing through these he realised how many of them reflect his long-standing interest in History and Science, and the variety in form and structure this has involved. This collection is designed to appeal to a wider-than-usual audience as well as the general poetry reader. Many readers will find this collection both a pleasure and a rewarding, if occasionally challenging, experience.

From From Standing Stones to the Stars

Re-reading Jane Austen

in the age of quantum entanglement

It is a truth universally acknowledged

that a single heavenly body, in possession

of space, must be in want of a soul mate. 

Between such bodies there is always gravity. 

And who is to say this isn't a form of love?

Whole galaxies may be holding hands, 

finding themselves entangled

at a subatomic level, sharing words of love. 

And, for all we know, causing each other 

both joy and heartache.

Let us imagine two heavenly bodies

and name them Elizabeth and Darcy,

separate them by unacknowledged forces

a physicist might label Pride and Prejudice.

Two planets, mere particles, seemingly 

destined to circle around each other forever.

There is much that is mysterious about love,

but two particles can exist in many places

at the same time yet be connected, 

and, though separate, can influence and refine 

each other's behaviour.

So who is to deny that our two particles,

one in a high-waisted white gown

and one in a tailcoat with white cravat,

could be entangled at this subatomic level,

discovering that they share an affinity

created by a chance encounter at a ball

or an innocent visit with an aunt.

In the light of quantum entanglement

Jane Austen was much wiser than we think.

With such knowledge would the tale

of Romeo and his Juliet, two universal 

star-crossed lovers, have to end as it did?

Or Abelard and Heloise suffer such a fate?

Intensive care

Back from theatre, again, the room quiet 

but for your breathing and the syllables 

of monitors and voices in the corridor,

your eyes closed in opiate delirium 

you whispered, "I’m being chased 

around the room by a mashed potato."

And, after a silence, "Is that you, dad?"

and you squeezed my hand.

To see your pale flesh turn red and swell,

a doctor's pen daily marking out the fronts,

was to witness Life reduced 

to mortal combat between microbes.

If only Love could be a friendly bacteria

we could drip-feed into veins.

But for now at least, thank God for surgeons 

and men of science, and Fleming.

And yes, thank God for love.

Had you gone before your time, the natural 

order disturbed, I would have needed 

your absence, the silences, made bearable; 

convinced myself you were still somewhere:

in the low clouds, your voice in the wind,

your hands part of the warm rain.

Heaven would be good. That’s what it’s for.

On Writing Memoir about Growing up in Leicester in the 1960s

By Sharon Tyers

The Leicester Seamstress

My mother was a sock linker in a hosiery factory in Leicester for forty years. Sometimes she called herself an overlocker. As a child I had no idea what that meant and all I knew about socks was that she brought home the rejects from the factory floor, the ones that didn’t pass muster, for me to wear. As a result, when I was writing her story, there were many challenges along the way.

Firstly, the hosiery industry in Leicester doesn’t exist anymore but when I was growing up it was proud to say it was "a city that clothed the world." How was I to capture those times when the factories had disappeared from sight? Secondly, by the time I decided to write my mother’s story she was incapacitated and bedridden in the final throes of vascular dementia and had no voice – she could not share her memories with me. Thirdly, the moral dilemma as to whether I had the right to write about my mother’s life caused me much unrest and sleepless nights.

My first decision was to return to the city of my birth, which I left in 1979 at the age of nineteen, and retrace my steps, but that too was beset with problems. Leicester Market, a favourite haunt, where mum would drag me from stall to stall filling her shopping bag with unwashed potatoes, wet lettuces and muddy carrots, was being dug up. Huge, faceless, white boards hid its faded glory and bulldozers drowned out the shouts of the few remaining stall holders. Mum’s factory, where she started work on her fourteenth birthday in 1946, had been converted into student accommodation and was ironically called The Hosiery Factory. The chimney was still there, though, and I stood outside and imagined it smoking when mum arrived and disappeared through the enormous gates to spend the next forty years of her life. Her life may not have been glamorous but I would swear as I stood there, I could hear the giggles she shared with the other women.

Indeed, on Facebook, when I posted a picture of The Leicester Seamstress, who stands on the corner of Hotel Street, over 700 local people came forward to share their love of what she represented – the ordinary hard-working hosiery operator. I knew then I had to continue to write about not only my mother’s life but their recollections too.

So, I kept walking through the past, from Newarke where the Midland Red bus used to drop us off, through the Magazine arch and up into St Martin’s, where we never knew we were walking over the bones of Richard III who would be found thirty years later. Most importantly, I needed to stand in Fox Lane, that shortcut we took between Marks and Lewis’s where the strongman in a thin vest lifted weights for the entertainment of the shoppers and the accordion player squeezed out Lady of Spain.

Fox Lane, Leicester, 1965

These may not be the most sophisticated research methods employed by writers but I was there, you see, and I’ve realised the pictures are still in my head even if they are not still on the streets of Leicester. I completed my book in June of this year and called it The Wrong Socks.

About the author
Sharon Tyers taught English for many years at The Blue Coat School in Liverpool and now lives in North Wales where her first book, Linen and Rooks, is set. An essay, The Lost Dens of Leicester, was published by Little Toller/The Clearing in August 2025, again about her Leicester childhood. She is currently writing After the Fair, the untold story of Susan Henchard, from Hardy’s The Mayor of Casterbridge. She gives talks in libraries and bookshops and campaigns for better oratory skills in schools. She misses Leicester. Her website is here. 

Rennie Parker, "Daughters of the Last Campaign"

Rennie Parker is a poet and FE worker, living in Lincolnshire. She has published several collections with Shoestring Press, her latest one being Balloons and Stripey Trousers.

She grew up in Leeds, and worked in tourism before researching a PhD at Birmingham Uni. Since then, she has worked in community arts and museums, taught literature, published criticism as well as poetry, and takes part in regional bookfairs and events. 

About Daughters of the Last Campaign, by Rennie Parker
The race to the South Pole, 1909 – 1911. What if a female expedition had really gone ahead? Meet Lady Helena the obsessive leader, her not-too-bright companion Gloria … and a third expeditioneer from (no!) a lower social class. Meanwhile, a modern-day researcher attempts to make sense of it all, hindered by a bitter descendant and a raft of eccentric enthusiasts. There is, of course, a re-enactment society who are going to deliver a LARP weekend, and an unwilling research supervisor who dislikes his supervisee; not to mention Major "Blaze" Fender-Bowen, who takes time out from his next TV series to speak with our contemporary heroine. What a shame the photographs from 1910 are so bad; is it possible that the whole expedition was a gigantic hoax? Join the intrepid Elizabeth Winsome Gardiner as she hauls a sledge across the white continent, acting as diarist, scientist, cook, and navigator. 

You can read more about Daughters of the Last Campaign on the author's website here. Below, you can read an excerpt from the novel. 

From Daughters of the Last Campaign
[Our 3-woman team is about to journey South. However, the paying-guest member, EWG, was recruited in a hurry thanks to a funding crisis.]

- Here you are. Compass, solar compass, chronometer, theodolite, sextant, map of the continent, Hansard’s Directory of Navigational Techniques, and a planar alidade.

- A what?

          I stood there astonished, holding out an irregular pile of scientific instruments which she had clattered into my arms.

- But, Lady Helena. The problem is –

          Gloria barged in with:

- And don’t forget the sledge meter; that’s the big bicycle wheel thingy on the end.

- But Lady Helena –

- Oh don’t look so glum, Dr. Gardiner. There will be plenty of opportunities for your medical pursuits. You can do all your scientific gubbins when we’re out there; it won’t be all typing and dictation, you know.

- But, Lady Helena. I am not a scientist. That is what I’ve been trying to say.

- But you’re a doctor. You said so.

- I am a musicologist. Doctor of Music. Didn’t you get my references?

          While Lady H. considered this important statement, Gloria said:

- Not medical then. Not one of those useful doctors.

- No. I’m an early music specialist. Sumer is icumen in, lhude syng cuccu.

- But you went to Newnham!

- Girton.

- And the Royal College.

- Royal College of Music. The RCM.

- So you’re not medical then.

- No. Whatever gave you that idea.

          There was a long pause. Seagulls cried overhead, and I heard the anchor rattling up on its chain.

- Oh bugger. I think I’ve made a terrible mistake.

          She turned towards me with a horrified expression, but before she could say anything, there was a raucous blast from the funnel. The deck underneath me began to slant and ride; then I suddenly found we were slipping away from the jetty, and a length of dirty green water was separating us from the land I loved. Only one question remained. What on earth was a planar alidade?

Constantine, "Tales of the Charnwood"

Congratulations to University of Leicester MA Creative Writing graduate Constantine on the publication of his new book of short stories!

Constantine is an autistic author and father. He achieved a first-class B.A. at Middlesex University in 2017 and completed his Master's Degree at the University of Leicester in 2022. Between the two degrees he wrote four episodes of the Children's T.V. show Pablo and has written and published the picture book Tiya and the Minotaur and The Cats of Charnwood Forest and its sequel Jötunheim. He runs the not-for-profit publishers Coalville Community Publishers CIC, which concentrates on the central Midlands, and Midlands generally. 

About Tales of the Charnwood, by Constantine
Tales of the Charnwood is eight bedtime stories about life on the Charnwood as recounted by a Vixen to her cubs. The book is set in the universe of The Cats of Charnwood Forest. 

You can read more about Tales of the Charnwood on the publisher's website here. Below, you can read a complete short story from the collection. 

From Tales of the Charnwood

Chapter Four: Badgers. 

The following evening, Vixen sat at the mouth of the den watching her cubs play for a few safe pre-dawn hours. She noticed that some of her darling children were teasing the smallest cub.  Every family has someone who is the smallest, just as someone must be the biggest. Being a fox of the Charnwood, Vixen knew right from wrong and made plans to teach her cubs the difference. 

She had a good store of stories at her command and soon remembered one that would suffice. 

The story of the Friendly Badger. 

Once her cubs had come back inside and had finished suckling, she began. 

"Now, dear ones, I will tell you a story of a Badger. Some Badgers are okay in their own way, some have even been known to share a den with a fox and even be on talking terms; however, these are few and far between. 

"Generally speaking, Badgers are grumpy and aggressive and quite scary, even when they’re on friendly terms, except for one. This is the story of the Friendly Badger." 

*** 

A long time ago in the quiet of the forest, a litter of Badgers was born.  As with every family, there was a biggest and a smallest; but while the smallest had a small body, he had the biggest heart. 

He wasn’t so good at the rough-and-tumble games his siblings liked to play. He much preferred to sniff flowers, watch the stars, or talk to any creatures he happened to meet. 

His own brothers and sisters were the first to tease him for his size and poor skill in wrestling contests. So, bit by bit, he started to avoid his siblings. Feeling lonely, he tried to make friends with the other night-time forest dwellers.    

One night, he met a fox going about its business.   

"Hello," said the Friendly Badger, "how are you?"   

"Are you talking to me?" said the fox. 

"Yes," said the Friendly Badger, "I’m hoping we can be friends."   

The fox laughed at him. 

"You can’t be a real Badger. Real Badgers aren’t friendly. You must be a rat with white stripes."  

And from that night on every time the fox saw him, he would delight in saying something cruel.   

On another night, the Badger came across a bat darting from tree to tree eating tiny insects.   

"Hello," said the Friendly Badger, "how are you?"   

"Are you talking to me?" said the bat.   

"Yes," said the Friendly Badger, "I’m hoping we can be friends."   

"Is this some sort of joke?" laughed the bat. "You’re more like a stripy bunny rabbit."   

And from that day on, whenever the bat saw the Friendly Badger, he would laugh at him and make up new insults.  

The Friendly Badger started to feel that maybe nobody would like him. Then, one evening, sitting on his own watching the stars, he heard a snuffling in the bushes. A moment later, a head appeared under the lower leaves; it was a young hedgehog.   

"Hello," said the hedgehog, "what sort of creature are you?"  

"I’m a badger," said the Friendly Badger. "Would you like to be friends?"  

"Oh yes," said the hedgehog. "Do you like hide-and-seek?" 

"Yes," said the Friendly Badger, "it’s one of my favourite games, but I’ve never had anyone to play with."   

In no time at all, the pair were playing merrily and agreed to meet up the following night.    

The next evening, when the Friendly Badger arrived at the meeting place, he was surrounded by a crowd of adult Hedgehogs, their spines quivering with anger. They shouted at him and chased him away, warning that they would hurt him if he came near their children again.   

Every creature the Friendly Badger met hurt and rejected him. He didn’t understand why. He meant no harm to anyone, and yet everyone hurt him. 

That autumn, he dug a new home (which for Badgers is called a sett) just for himself and went to sleep dreaming about all the horrible things people had said to him.   

Now, when animals like Badgers hibernate, they often grow, and when he emerged in the spring, he had gone from being the smallest to one of the biggest Badgers the Charnwood had ever seen.   

He was no longer the "Friendly Badger."   

In the long winter, dreaming of all the horrid things those other creatures had said and done to him, his heart had frozen and would never thaw again. He sought out everyone who used to tease and bully him, and, one by one ... he ate them.   

But even then, when those who had teased him were gone, and no creature dared come near, the horrible names stayed with him. He spent the rest of his days lonely, sad, and angry.   

***   

"You see, children," said the Vixen, pausing just long enough to make her cubs uncomfortable. "When you bully someone, everybody loses." 

John Schad, "Walter Benjamin's Ark: A Departure in Biography"

 

John Schad is Professor of Modern Literature at University of Lancaster. His books include: Someone Called Derrida. An Oxford Mystery (Sussex, 2007); The Late Walter Benjamin. A False Novel (Bloomsbury, 2012); Paris Bride. A Modernist Life (Punctum, 2020); Derrida | Benjamin. Two Plays for the Stage (Palgrave, 2021), co-authored with Fred Dalmasso; and Walter Benjamin’s Ark. A Departure in Biography (UCL Press, 2025). He has had two retrospectives published, Hostage of the Word (2013) and John Schad in Conversation (2015), has read his work on BBC Radio 3’s The Verb and at various festivals, and his plays have been performed at The Oxford Playhouse, Watford Palace Theatre, HowTheLight GetsIn, and the Sheldonian Theatre, Oxford. His next book, he says, is Eng. Lit. -- A Phantom History. 

About Walter's Benjamin's Ark, by John Schad
On July 10th 1940, amidst fear of Nazi invasion, HMT Dunera, a so-called "hell-ship" left England. On board were a few British soldiers guarding over two-thousand interned male Enemy Aliens – mostly Germans. Many of the internees had, until arrest, lived peaceably in England for some time. Now, though, they were herded together, below deck, and with all hatches sealed. 

Some of the internees were passionate Nazis, most were Jewish refugees. And among them was Stefan Benjamin, the estranged child of the German-Jewish intellectual, Walter Benjamin. Stefan was not, though, the only "name" aboard, there also being one man called Kafka, another called Freud, yet another called Wittgenstein, still another called Karl Marx, and three called Wilde.

After surviving a U-boat attack, the ship headed south, and far from Europe. And, with no word as to how the world and its War was going, fights broke out, one sad man jumped overboard, lectures were organised, questions were asked, and both fathers and women (killed and un-killed) were dreamt of. 

Cue Walter Benjamin’s Ark which, just like those aboard, swears, prays, and (above all) quotes wildly as she goes. And, all the while, she is hell-bent on learning why we are here, who is here, and where are we heading. New world? Next world? Or (dear God) the end of the world? 

On September 6, 1940, HMT Dunera finally docked in Sydney.

You can read more about Walter Benjamin's Ark on the publisher's website here. Below, you can read an excerpt from the opening of the book. 

From Walter Benjamin's Ark

10 July 1940

No. No. This was not what S. had hoped. Not of Merry England, not the dark. Not at all. Not the pandemonium, not the bayonets, not the barbed wire. Not even the oil-painted face of the waters. The deep. 

But what, thought S., could be said of it all? What indeed? Words, like the day, were failing him. If he had still possessed the gift of tongues, as granted his child-self, his dwarf-self, he surely would have had the words, words adequate to the situation, words equal to this new dark house of his. With such a gift, he might, for instance, have looked about and remarked, It is totally unwindowed.* 

           S. stumbled. 

           Or inquired, How does the house see? 

           S. tripped. 

           Or perhaps he might have said, The sun is ill today.  

           S. staggered.  

           Or even, My whole ear is laughed full of headache. 

           The blind house swayed.  

  

*

           [Since] expatriation, my son has not been able to find his balance. 

           (Walter Benjamin)

*

(*All italicised words attributed to S. are from Benjamin’s transcription of Stefan’s infant utterances).