Graham Mort and Lawrence Scott longlisted for the Edge Hill Short Story Prize
Terroir by Graham Mort and Leaving By Plane Swimming Back Underwater by Lawrence Scott have been longlisted for the 2016 Edge Hill Short Story Prize.
From England to Europe, Africa to South America, these stories from prizewinning short-story writer Graham Mort explore relationships: father and child; man and wife; man and his environment.
A rising star of winemaking understands his terroir, but oversteps the boundaries; a father taking his son on a day out finds himself in unexpectedly terrifying circumstances; an aid worker in Uganda finds himself treading in his father’s footsteps…
All these stories are sensitively told and beautifully written, bringing fresh perspectives to our place in the world around us.
Graham Mort’s first collection of short stories, Touch, was published in 2010 and contained the Bridport prize winning story ‘The Prince’. Touch went on to win the Edge Hill Prize in 2011. This collection was written over five years, partly during a writing fellowship at the University of the Western Cape, South Africa. He is currently Professor of Creative Writing and Transcultural Literature at Lancaster University.
Scott's collection of short stories explores a Caribbean world of yearnings and memory, of escape and return underpinned by the disturbing tensions wrought by religion, race, sexuality and crime.
Sensuous and evocative, Scott’s prose has a glorious lightness of touch and tone that exhilarates and illuminates.
He has been short-listed for Commonwealth writers’ prizes three times, long-listed for the Whitbread Prize and the Booker Prize and was winner of the Tom-Gallon Short Story Award. His latest novel is Light Falling on Bamboo (Profile Books, 9781781251584) about the 19th-century painter Jean Michel Cazabon. Leaving by Plane Swimming Back Underwater is his second short-story collection. He lives and works in both London and Port of Spain, Trinidad.
For more information on the other nominees visit the Edgehill University website.