Short Stories… 

My first published short story was entitled 'Grey Wolf' and won the Winchester Writers' Festival Short Story Prize in 2018. Like many a story, this one began with an idea of 'place': a nondescript pathway in woods where I have walked many times, and which for no very obvious reason took on such significance that I determined to write about it. 'Grey Wolf' is the result.

Sadly, the anthology in which it was originally published is now out of print, so I have published it again here. Please feel free to take a look. 

In October 2022, The Casket of Fictional Delights created a podcast of my short story 'The Eccentric Tourist'. You can listen to it here, and it's also available on iTunes, Amazon Music, Spotify and Google Podcasts.

Listen to 'The Eccentric Tourist'  being read by Malk Williams. 

Two-minute reads, 'A Second-Hand Coat', 'The Tightrope Walker', 'Collecting Pine Cones' and 'A Smile in a Fogged-Up Coffee Shop', are all very short stories - sometimes called flash fiction - and can be reached via the links below.

In 2019, 'Five Strong Colours' was longlisted in the Leicester Writes Short Story Competition run by Dahlia Publishing. Later that year it featured in their anthology, and I had the privilege of reading an extract from it at the Crossroads Festival.

'Five Strong Colours' is a work of fiction inspired by a BBC News report c.2015. The news story highlighted the plight of goatherds on the drought-stricken Tibetan Plateau as they watched their grassland home turn to desert.

A short story set in Manchester and entitled 'A Letter from the North' was one of the winners of the 2019/20 Fish Short Story Prize. It is published below and in the Fish Anthology 2020. 

In July 2025 I won the Cheshire Prize for Literature for a short story entitled 'Her Face is Mine'. This will be published in November 2025 by the University of Chester Press in an anthology entitled 'Kaleidoscope'. 

University of Chester Press release here