Two Ravens Press Prizes!

Two brilliant new prizes for the Glasgow Student Short Story Prize from Two Ravens Press! The First Prize winner will get copies of their two latest short story collections:

Fighting It, by Regi Claire
Summary, from the Introduction by Louise Welsh

A woman revolutionary, a woman in prison, a husband seeking revenge, a child driven to sin – they are all ‘fighting it’, battling to retain their belief in themselves.

No mere slices of life, the stories in this second collection by award-winning Scottish-Swiss author Regi Claire have the range and depth of whole novels. They give voice to men and women who seem otherwise condemned to suffer in silence and whose struggles we recognise as our own. Sometimes with humour, sometimes in despair they cry out, clamouring for our attention. Claire’s prose is edgy and vibrant and, whether set in the ice-cool beauty of the Swiss mountains, the heat of Tenerife, the urban frenzy of Paris, Zurich or Edinburgh, her tales are at once deeply disturbing and almost unbearably compassionate.

Praise for Regi Claire:

‘Regi Claire is a writer of compassion and determination. Her stories are filled with the details of pain and physical bewilderment and leavened with tenderness.’ A. L. Kennedy

‘Sharp, intense and almost frighteningly perceptive.’ Lesley Glaister, Sunday Herald

‘What she certainly has is the storyteller’s gift.’ Edwin Morgan

‘Claire’s writing is taut yet supple, bursting with exotic images, not a single one of which seems superfluous. She’s sharp as a scalpel, and compassionate too. Instruct your bookseller to order one for you and a dozen for the shop.’
Nicholas Royle, Time Out

‘Never insipid, full of imagination.’ Times Literary Supplement

The Floating Order, by Erin Pringle

The Floating Order is a unique and innovative collection of stories. Erin Pringle’s world is filled with the dreamlike, nightmarish narratives of children: children in danger, children at the mercy of their parents, children in all kinds of trouble. Children who continually rise, return, and haunt the pages.

Praise for Erin Pringle:

“Erin Pringle’s stories are true wonders – a beautiful mix of intimate feeling, thick syntax, and dangerous language.” Michael Kimball

“Erin Pringle’s prose scoots from sentence to sentence, invokes an aphoristic, non sequitur hopscotch composition strategy of familiar defamiliarization. It is no mean achievement to sustain such a story-like lyricism over the long haul of a book-length collection. This is a remarkable debut. A keeper that keeps keeping on.” Michael Martone

“The stories in Erin Pringle’s first collection possess the charm of fairy tales, the wisdom of poems, the hope of prayers, the weight of eulogies, and the intimacy of letters home. There’s an old soul at the center of this book, an old soul with a passionate, lyrical, exhilarating new voice.” Tom Noyes

'A collection of rather disturbing short stories. "Enjoyed" really wouldn't be the right word. "Impressed" would be nearer the mark.' Scott Pack, The Friday Project

Find out more about Erin Pringle (including an interview about writing, reading, and inspiration) here. Erin also has a blog 'What She Might Think'.

Thank you, Two Ravens Press!