Edge Hill Prize shortlist 2015

It's that time of year again: the shortlist for the Edge Hill Prize for a short-story collection has been announced, and I didn't even get around to commenting on the long list.

As usual, the long list is dominated by independent publishers, with 9 of the 26 titles coming from Celtic publishers - no less than 5 of those from Ireland - and the established London houses fielding a mere 4 between them. Two books from big publishers, however, make it to the shortlist of 6, along with one from Scotland (Freight), one from Ireland (Doire), and one each from independents Seagull and Salt, based in Kolkata and Norfolk respectively:

Waiting for the Bullet, Madeleine D'Arcy (Doire)

The Redemption of Galen Pike, Carys Davies (Salt)

Infidelities, Kirsty Gunn (Faber)

Life-Like, Toby Litt (Seagull)

Any Other Mouth, Annaliese Mackintosh (Freight)

The American Lover, Rose Tremain (Chatto and Windus)

I've never thought to wonder previously about gender representation on previous shortlists and long lists for this prize, but as one of my Facebook commenters pointed out, this shortlist includes only one man, reflecting perhaps the fact that the long list is weighted towards female authorship, which possibly indicates that women currently dominate the short-story scene.

Heavyweights Hilary Mantel and A L Kennedy miss out, which is interesting: personally, I liked Mantel's book, although as critics pointed out, it did have the air of stories written over a long period and thus lacked the cohesiveness that this prize is specifically looking for in a collection. Cohesiveness certainly characterises all of the books on the shortlist. Annaliese Mackintosh's confessedly autobiographical and amazingly energetic collection obsessively circles the same moments and operates more as a short-story cycle; Toby Litt experiments cleverly throughout his collection with different forms, but overall it is a kind of jazz riff featuring connected characters. Kirsty Gunn's beautifully written stories are tightly bound by voice, theme and sensibility, as are Madeleine D'Arcy's and those of Carys Davies whose collection has the mythic quality she has made all her own. And while the stories in Rose Tremain's collection are strikingly varied in subject matter, and sometimes voice, a sense of her steady authorial sensibility makes these a strength.

I can't imagine who is going to win...