The Literary Lancashire Award is proud to present its 2021 anthology of shortlisted entries. Packed with magnificent and unique short fiction and poetry, this volume celebrates the work of some of the most promising young authors in the county. Sit back and enjoy the wonderful work of Katie Kingsman, Kayla Jenkins, Ditte Jensen, Charlotte Lloyd, Courtenay S. Gray, Cait Cook and many, many more! Contents: Short Form Poetry ‘X+Y’ by Sam Allport ‘wail at the foot of Lia Fail’ by Beth Train-Brown ‘The Mouth of Heaven’ by Alex Roman Prose ‘Pando’ by Katie Kingsman ‘Examination’ by Ditte Jensen ‘& the tempo is all mine’ by Charlotte Lloyd ‘Two and Not One’ by Joseph Dodds ‘28 Miles’ by Anna Jenkins ‘New Endings’ by Justine Bondare ‘The Blood of Ravenscree’ by Jeni Meadows ‘You Just Need to Be in the Right Time at the Right Place’ by Martin Palmer Poetry ‘The begonia bush’ by Kayla Jenkins ‘高天原 – Takamagahara’ by Courtenay S. Gray ‘Every Other Friday’ by Cait Cook ‘Timperley Postal Options’ by Max Gorse ‘Parallel Universe’ by Toby Hudson ‘The Sound of Revolution’ by Asad Naqvi ‘Elegy for Faith’ by Rachana Hegde ‘To my Dearest Z’ by Yara Stepurova

'A sweet romance with a truly contemporary feel, set in a teenage world full of positivity, joy and a sense of boundless possibilities.' BOOKTRUST Five music festivals . . . One unforgettable summer! A new clean teen romance, shortlisted for the Lancashire Book of the Year 2021. 16-year-old songwriter Nova is having the best summer of her life. Helping out with her parents' food truck, she gets to attend not one, but FIVE different music festivals! Things get even better when she meets cute American boy, Sam, an aspiring musician like her. After sharing a magical evening dancing under the stars, Nova never expects to see Sam again. But to her surprise they keep meeting up at music festivals . . . Nova begins to hope that their romance could become more than just a festival fling. So why is Sam so reluctant to talk about himself? And why does he have access to the VIP backstage area . . .? A perfect summer beach read for fans of Holly Smale and Jenny Han.

Who's Loving You is a collection of short stories celebrating desire and love in all its guises, written by and reflecting the experiences of women of colour in an authentic way. The stories are authored by some of the best storytellers working in the UK today, with the full line-up of contributors to be announced shortly. WHO'S LOVING US? LET US SHOW YOU...

A captivating, sexy romance that explores the limits of love at first sight... Afro-Brazilian filmmaker Ren is recovering from a romantic betrayal. Kayla is a Black British artist and journalist keen to make her mark. Thrown together during a string of interviews in New York for Ren's latest film, they're struck by an irresistible attraction. The two surrender to one night of searing honesty and passion, which leaves them with more questions than answers about the future. With secrets lurking between them, letting their romance continue could upend the separate lives Ren and Kayla have so carefully built. But can they really risk losing their miraculous connection?

It is 1939. Eva Delectorskaya is a beautiful 28-year-old Russian émigrée living in Paris. As war breaks out she is recruited for the British Secret Service by Lucas Romer, a mysterious Englishman, and under his tutelage she learns to become the perfect spy, to mask her emotions and trust no one, including those she loves most. Since the war, Eva has carefully rebuilt her life as a typically English wife and mother. But once a spy, always a spy. Now she must complete one final assignment, and this time Eva can't do it alone: she needs her daughter's help.

'A beautiful novel about messy relationships, finding yourself and over-coming past trauma. I completely lost myself in this story' SARA JAFARI, author of The Mismatch 'I enjoyed this book very much' DOROTHY KOOMSON Taylor is in love with Ryan. She has been since the moment they met. But Ryan is with Marcy - her best friend. When everything fell apart around Taylor years before, Marcy was there for her. No matter how much Taylor wants Ryan, she refuses to lose Marcy's friendship. A master of burying her feelings, Taylor is determined to resist. But the unspoken bond she and Ryan share isn't going away. And when Marcy leaves for a few weeks, just as Ryan moves into their shared flat, the tension grows to unbearable proportions. As the line between right and wrong becomes blurred, Taylor will have to decide whether she can - or should - turn away from what might be the love of her life. Tender and poignant, The Three of Us is a story about real life and true love, grief and joy, and the power of friendship. 'Sareeta Domingo is the voice of a generation of women wanting to see themselves and their lives featured in romance literature. Domingo effortlessly weaves stories that allow us to think about love, being in love and, most of all, desired. Her ability to craft characters lovingly and tenderly whilst ensuring her readers have the drama, stolen glances and sweaty embraces they crave makes her a permanent feature on my bookshelf' MELISSA CUMMINGS-QUARRY, The Black Girls' Book Club *Previously published as THE NEARNESS OF YOU* Find out why readers LOVE The Three of Us 'Just that soft romantic and inspiring read that I needed' Amazon reviewer 'If you're looking for an emotional story about loss, love, friendship, and figuring out how to be happy, I definitely recommend this book' Goodreads reviewer 'This book, set in the beautiful streets of London was a great and touching read' Goodreads reviewer 'A joy from cover to cover' Amazon reviewer 'A beautifully-written, intense, emotional love story' Amazon reviewer

A man builds a tree house by a river, in anticipation of the coming flood. A sugar-beet crashes through a young woman's windscreen. A boy sets fire to a barn. A pair of itinerant labourers sit by a lake, talking about shovels and sex, while fighter-planes fly low overhead and prepare for war. These aren't the sort of things you imagine happening to someone like you. But sometimes they do. Set in the flat and threatened fenland landscape, where the sky is dominant and the sea lurks just beyond the horizon, these delicate, dangerous, and sometimes deeply funny stories tell of things buried and unearthed, of familiar places made strange, and of lives where much is hidden, much is at risk, and tender moments are hard-won.

A “remarkable chronicle” of a journey back to this West African nation after years of exile (The New York Times Book Review). Noo Saro-Wiwa was brought up in England, but every summer she was dragged back to visit her father in Nigeria—a country she viewed as an annoying parallel universe where she had to relinquish all her creature comforts and sense of individuality. After her father, activist Ken Saro-Wiwa, was killed there, she didn’t return for several years. Then she decided to come to terms with the country her father given his life for. Traveling from the exuberant chaos of Lagos to the calm beauty of the eastern mountains; from the eccentricity of a Nigerian dog show to the decrepit kitsch of the Transwonderland Amusement Park, she explores Nigerian Christianity, delves into the country’s history of slavery, examines the corrupting effect of oil, and ponders the huge success of Nollywood. She finds the country as exasperating as ever, and frequently despairs at the corruption and inefficiency she encounters. But she also discovers that it is far more beautiful and varied than she had ever imagined, with its captivating thick tropical rain forest and ancient palaces and monuments—and most engagingly and entertainingly, its unforgettable people. “The author allows her love-hate relationship with Nigeria to flavor this thoughtful travel journal, lending it irony, wit and frankness.” —Kirkus Reviews

Shakespeare scholar James Shapiro explains when and why so many people began to question whether Shakespeare wrote his plays.

A woman grows increasingly frustrated by the emails she receives from her deceased husband… A taxidermist dreams of bringing one of his clients into his workshop after preserving her grandfather’s hamster… A grieving nurse is troubled by her daughter’s fascination with The Iron Lady… In her stirring and disquieting debut collection of stories, Sarah Schofield explores emotions that seethe beneath the surface of ourselves and live in the spaces that language can’t reach, elevating manifestations of loneliness, grief and disconnection into direct sight. The characters we meet in Safely Gathered In harness objects around them, both manmade and of the natural world, to deal with secrets and loss; from the child acting out a family betrayal from the comfort of her dolls house, to the sister making wind-up toys from the dead birds she finds on her doorstep. Venturing into the surreal and experimenting with tropes of science-fiction, these stories consider the effects of consumerism on our most intimate moments, grasp into the depths of nostalgia, and cast a fresh light into the gaps we navigate each day between reality and longing. "This is a deliciously wry Black Mirror-esque collection that provokes and disturbs. A bold and brilliant debut." – Lucie McKnight Hardy, author of Water Shall Refuse Them "Schofield's collection comprises finely inventive stories, astute in their side angle swipes on reality. A memorable and distinctive debut." – Kiare Ladner, author of Nightshift "Sarah Schofield is a writer with tremendous rage and inventiveness, who takes the short story to new places" – Naomi Booth, author of Exit Management "Sharp, insightful and haunting, these stories are not safe reading. An astounding debut." – Angela Readman, author of Something Like Breathing "An enchanting, vital collection. Strange, incisive and compelling." – Irenosen Okojie, author of Nudibranch