Best British Short Stories 2025

The definitive showcase of the year’s finest British short stories

‘Bravo to Salt’s beacon of delight and intrigue – its annual collection of the UK’s best short stories, from established and emerging voices.’ —Duncan Minshull

Now relaunched for a new era, Best British Short Stories returns with a bold new look and a renewed commitment to celebrating the art of the short story. As we enter our fifteenth volume, this much-loved annual collection continues to be the go-to anthology for readers seeking the most exciting and diverse voices in contemporary British fiction.

Assembled by series editor Nicholas Royle, Best British Short Stories 2025 presents a stellar selection of stories first published in 2024, drawn from magazines, journals, anthologies, collections, chapbooks, and online. Whether you’re a devoted follower or discovering the series for the first time, this new edition reaffirms our mission to champion storytelling in all its forms.

‘If the latest iteration of Salt’s Best British Short Stories collection is anything to go by then the genre remains in safe hands.’ —Lawrence Foley, TLS

Featuring stories by: David Bevan, Rose Biggin, Christopher Burns, Ian Critchley, Pippa Goldschmidt, Linden Hibbert, Hannah Hoare, Catrin Kean, Roger Luckhurst, Baret Magarian, Wyl Menmuir, Alison Moore, Okechukwu Nzelu, Simon Okotie, Imogen Reid, C. D. Rose, Iain Sinclair, Elizabeth Stott, Mark Valentine, and Naomi Wood.

is the author of six short story collections – Mortality, Ornithology, The Dummy and Other Uncanny Stories, London Gothic, Manchester Uncanny and Paris Fantastique – and seven novels, most recently First Novel. He has edited more than two dozen anthologies and is series editor of Best British Short Stories for Salt, who also published his books-about-books, White Spines: Confessions of a Book Collector and Shadow Lines: Searching For the Book Beyond the Shelf. In 2009 he founded Nightjar Press, which continues to publish original short stories in the form of limited-edition chapbooks. He lives in Manchester and London. David Bevan is a 2021 graduate of the Manchester Writing School’s Creative Writing MA programme. ‘The Bull’ is one of two stories first published by Nightjar Press. Christopher Burns is the author of six novels – Snakewrist, The Flint Bed, In the Houses of the West, The Condition of Ice, Dust Raising and A Division of the Light – and a short story collection, About the Body. He lives in Whitehaven, West Cumbria. Linden Hibbert runs a pop-up art gallery in rural Suffolk. She has a PhD in creative writing from UEA, and is currently researching the adaptation of Ovidian myths from poetry to sculpture. Her short stories have been published by the Baltimore Review, and the Madrid Review, among others. Hannah Hoare is a television producer, director and scriptwriter specialising in natural history programmes. Her short fiction has been published online by The Molotov Cocktail, Flashback Fiction, The Cabinet of Heed and Thin Skin. She lives in Wiltshire, in southern England. Baret Magarian was born in London, of Armenian origin. He was educated at Durham and London Universities and has published The Fabrications, Melting Point, Mirror and Silhouette and Chattering. He is a lecturer, pianist-composer, amateur painter, guitarist, writer and poet. He has travelled widely and has worked as nude model, translator, musician, interviewer, journalist, book representative, and in PR. Wyl Menmuir is a novelist and editor based in Cornwall. His bestselling debut novel, The Many (Salt), was longlisted for the 2016 Man Booker Prize. In November 2016, Nightjar Press published a limited-edition chapbook of his story Rounds and in 2017, the National Trust published his story, In Dark Places. He has written for Kneehigh Theatre, Radio 4’s Open Book, the Guardian and the Observer, and is a regular contributor to the journal Elementum. He teaches creative writing at Falmouth University and is co-creator of Cornish writing centre The Writers’ Block. Alison Moore's first novel, The Lighthouse, was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize and the National Book Awards (New Writer of the Year), winning the McKitterick Prize. Both The Lighthouse and her second novel, He Wants, were Observer Books of the Year. Her short fiction has been included in Best British Short Stories and Best British Horror anthologies, broadcast on BBC Radio 4 Extra and collected in The Pre-War House and Other Stories. Born in Manchester in 1971, she lives near Nottingham with her husband Dan and son Arthur. Okechukwu Nzelu’s debut novel, The Private Joys of Nnenna Maloney, won a Betty Trask Award and was shortlisted for the Betty Trask Prize, the Desmond Elliott Prize and the Polari First Book Prize. His second novel, Here Again Now, was published in 2022. He is a lecturer in creative writing at Lancaster University. Simon Okotie is a fiction writer and essayist. He is the author of Whatever Happened to Harold Absalon?, In the Absence of Absalon and After Absalon, an acclaimed trilogy of novels published by Salt. In the Absence of Absalon was longlisted for the 2017 Republic of Consciousness Prize. His work has appeared in FT Weekend and Gorse, and at 3:AM Magazine and The White Review. Two Degrees of Freedom, a short story, is published by Nightjar Press. CD Rose is the author of Who’s Who When Everyone is Someone Else and the editor of The Biographical Dictionary of Literary Failure. His short fiction has appeared in 3:AM, Gorse, Lighthouse and The Lonely Crowd. Elizabeth Stott was born in Kent and has lived in the north of England for most of her life. Her fiction and poetry has been published in magazines and anthologies, also as a collection of stories – Familiar Possessions. Her poetry pamphlet – The Undoing – was published in 2023 by Maytree Press. Most recently, her stories have appeared in Confingo Magazine and Mslexia and featured at a Liars’ League spoken-word event. Mark Valentine is from Northampton but now lives in Yorkshire. He is the author of studies of Arthur Machen (1995) and the diplomat and fantasist Sarban (2010). His short stories are published by the independent imprints Tartarus Press (UK), The Swan River Press (Ireland), Sarob Press (France) and Zagava (Germany). He also writes essays on book-collecting and forgotten authors. is the bestselling author of The Godless Boys, Mrs. Hemingway and The Hiding Game. Her novels have won a Jerwood Award, the British Library Hay Festival Prize, and been shortlisted for the Walter Scott Prize, the Dylan Thomas Prize, and the Historical Writers Golden Crown. Her début story collection is This is Why We Can’t Have Nice Things, which includes the 2023 BBC National Short Story Prize winner, ‘Comorbidities’. Her interests are complicated femininity and transgressive motherhood, especially in the modern workplace. She is an Associate Professor of Creative Writing at the University of East Anglia.