Novel short story writer Carys Davies triumphs

THE Frank O’Connor International Short Story Award for 2015 has been awarded to Welsh writer Carys Davies for her second collection, The Redemption of Galen Pike.

Llangollen-born Davies, who now lives in Lancaster with her husband and four children, studied modern languages at St Anne’s College, Oxford, and worked for several years as a freelance journalist in England, New York and Chicago. Her debut collection, Some New Ambush, came out with Salt Publishing to considerable acclaim in 2007, and offered immediate evidence of a significant talent at work. Her second collection also published by Salt, confirms beyond doubt her position among the finest British exponents of a particularly challenging form.

“I’ve been writing stories for 20 years,” she said, “and what I’ve learned is that the short story is neither an abbreviated novel nor an expanded poem – it’s its own thing. A short story may be short, but it is not small or slight. It is a brief drama of the soul; a tense, urgent thing that disturbs the mind and shocks the heart.”