Ruby Cowling – ENSFR

The European Network for Short Fiction Research was established in 2013 with the aim of fostering and promoting the study of short fiction in European universities and in interaction with short fiction writers. After an inaugural meeting early in 2014, the ENSFR has organized annual conferences as well as sponsored several other study days and events. This website aims to be an interactive platform for sharing research, expertise, ideas and information about short fiction in its diversity of linguistic traditions and forms.

13 January 2021

Edge Hill Prize 2020 winner

Shelley Day has been named the winner of the 2020 Edge Hill Prize for her debut collection, What Are You Like. Ruby Cowling won the Readers’ Choice Prize for another debut collection, This Paradise.

12 September 2020

Edge Hill Prize shortlist 2020.

The Edge Hill Prize 2020 for a published short story collection from the UK or Ireland has just been announced. £10,000 will be awarded to the winner in November. The collections are:

Paris Syndrome by Lucy Sweeney Byrne (Banshee Press)
This Paradise by Ruby Cowling (Boiler House Press)
What Are You Like by Shelley Day (Postbox Press)
Sudden Traveller by Sarah Hall (Faber)
This Way to Departures by Linda Mannheim (Influx Press)

The European Network for Short Fiction Research was created as a joint initiative of researchers at Edge Hill University (U.K.), the Université d’Angers (France) and the University of Leuven (Belgium). We have now been joined by many other colleagues from all over Europe. Our broad aim is to foster and promote research on short fiction across different countries and institutions.

We aim to provide a forum and resources for European-based researchers into the practice, criticism and transmission of short fiction in its diversity of forms and to facilitate collaboration in both critical and practice-led research. We hold annual conferences on short fiction, hosted in different universities across Europe, and we facilitate and support many other conferences, workshops and seminars in the broad field of short fiction studies.