Last Friday I attended the prize-giving ceremony for The Edge Hill Short Story Prize. Ailsa Cox and the team behind the Prize presented a wonderful evening at Manchester’s Royal Exchange, with previous Transmission interviewee A.L. Kennedy announcing the winner.

Colm Tóibín, the Irish writer of The Master, won the £5000 prize for his collection Mothers and Sons. In his excellent acceptance speech, Colm revealed that he only discovered how to write short stories after he had written several novels, and cited James Joyce’s The Dead as one of his favourites.

The Edge Hill Prize has proved a success and it is one of the few that rewards and promotes the short story form. We are certainly looking forward to see how it develops in coming years.