The short story is alive and well in the UK according to novelist Stephen King, who this week picked the winner of a competition launched to celebrate his own latest collection, The Bazaar of Bad Dreams.
More than 800 creepy tales were submitted to the contest, run by the Guardian and King’s UK publisher, Hodder & Stoughton. King, who chose the winner from a shortlist of six, said: “I never expected such quality, and it does my heart good. Every one of these stories would be publishable.”
The bestselling novelist picked Elodie Harper’s Wild Swimming – a sinister tale set around a reservoir in Lithuania – as the winner, describing it as “part of a small but interesting genre: the 21st‑century epistolary tale.” Harper, 34, is a reporter for ITV News Anglia.
The six shortlisted stories included two about “evil toys”: The Unpicking, by Michael Button, which King described as “a delightfully sinister, intriguing and satisfyingly macabre addition to the genre of toy stories”, and Manuela Saragosa’s Eau-de-Eric, which stood out, he said, for its “good, clean prose, clarity of narration and beautifully sinister build”.
A third story, La Mort de L’Amant, by Stuart Johnstone, in which a man is stopped by police with a body in the back of his truck, demonstrated the importance of not telling too much, as did Neil Hudson’s post-apocalyptic The Bear Trap, in which a boy, apparently surviving in a cabin on his own, faces down an armed man. “We are never told exactly what disaster has befallen him, but based on some of the details (all that fallen ash, for instance), we can assume it may have been nuclear Armageddon,” said King, who added that Edgar Allan Poe would have liked Paul Bassett Davies’s fable of totalitarian intimidation, The Spots.
“My favourite, however – and the winner – is Wild Swimming,” said King. “It is told via email, making it part of a small but interesting genre: the 21st‑century epistolary tale. One central image could have come straight out of an EC horror comic from the 1950s. Once again, we are told not too much (that the Russians may have deliberately drowned the inhabitants, for instance), but just enough. The central plot element – wild swimming – is new and novel, something I’d never encountered before.”
As well as seeing her story published on Guardian books, Elodie Harper wins a Guardian masterclass with King’s editor Philippa Pride, aka The Book Doctor.
The full longlist (in alphabetical order):
Alexander Agbamu – A ROOMFUL OF STRANGERS
Sean Baker – GRANTCHESTER MEADOWS IN THE SUMMER AT DAWN
Paul Bassett Davies – THE SPOTS (shortlisted)
Michael Button – THE UNPICKING (shortlisted)
Anthony Bynom – A SMALL BORDER INCIDENT
Kate Ennals – THE LAST WALTZ
James Harding – THE STEPS
Elodie Harper – WILD SWIMMING (winner)
Lisa Hayter – A KISS IN THE DARK
Neil Hudson – THE BEAR TRAP (shortlisted)
Stuart Johnstone – LA MORT DE L’AMANT (shortlisted)
Kelly Pells – THE UNKINDNESS OF RAVENS
David Pickering – THE GHOST AT THE FOOT OF THE STAIRS
Victoria Richards – THE CAMERA
Valentin Richitta – THE ECHOES OF A RITUAL
Manuela Saragosa – EAU-DE-ERIC (shortlisted)
Jon Sparey – SATISFACTION BROUGHT IT BACK
Josephine Turner – BEHIND THE YELLOW LINE
R T Young – SO LONG
Ryan Willox – THE NIGHTWATCHMAN’S TALE
For more information about The Bazaar of Bad Dreams, click here.
