Franklin wins Desperate Literature Short Fiction Prize for ‘unique’ story

Hadley Franklin has been named the winner of the Desperate Literature Short Fiction Prize 2023 for "Falling", a story exploring “the strange celebrity of death and the exploitation of vulnerability surrounding loss".

As winner, Franklin will receive £1,290 (€1,500) in prize money, a seven-day residency at the Civitella Ranieri artist’s retreat in Umbria, Italy, and a manuscript assessment of up to 60,000 words through The Literary Consultancy, a service which also includes a one-to-one editorial consultancy session.

This year’s runners-up are Nicholas Clark ("Damsons") and Andrea Mason ("Today, at the Dump, the World is in the Bin"). They receive £645 (€750) each. All three writers win a consultation with a literary agent from Johnson & Alcock. The prize money is made possible by The de Groot Foundation.

The judges were authors Mariana Enríquez, Ottessa Moshfegh and PEN Translation Prize winning literary translator Tiffany Tsao.

Of Franklin’s winning story, Moshfegh said: “’Falling’ [is something] I haven’t read before: a story of loss, but focused, not on grief, but on how others make use of the depth and power of death [...] Beautiful in its economy, not a word too long or short. Moving, and yet very quiet. Precise and relaxed.”

Enríquez called Franklin’s winning entry “honest and sensual [...] carrying a slight but intense wickedness”. Of the 2023 shortlist, judge Tiffany Tsao said: “There is such energy in these stories.”

Founded and organised by the Madrid bookshop Desperate Literature and now in its sixth year, the Desperate Literature Short Fiction Prize was launched in 2017 as “an international attempt to provide a holistic framework of opportunities for writers of innovative and boundary-pushing short fiction". This year the prize has partnered with 15 literary organisations, and is providing residency programmes, consultation sessions with editors and literary agents, international event and publication opportunities, as well as traditional financial prizes.

All 11 shortlisted writers will be published by Desperate Literature in their annual collection Eleven Stories, as well as being invited to read at a number of events over the course of the next year. The first of these will be a launch event at the Desperate Literature bookshop in Madrid, followed by a London launch at Burley Fisher Books in the spring of 2024.