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Sukie Wilson wins 2024 Desperate Literature Short Fiction Prize for 'Leaving Night Country'
Sukie Wilson has won the 2024 Desperate Literature Short Fiction Prize for "Leaving Night Country", a speculative story exploring "menial labour under capitalism" and our "complex interior lives". Wilson will receive €2,000 (£1,688) in prize money, a week-long 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.
This year’s runners-up are Amanda Hildebrandt for "No Safe Place" and Richie Jones for "Nuggy Spins the Lemons". Both have been awarded €1000 (£844), and all three writers will get a consultation with a literary agent from Johnson & Alcock and a "Power Hour" with The Literary Consultancy. Jones has also won a two-week residency with prize partner Studio Faire in Nérac, France.
The prize, which is supported by The de Groot Foundation, was judged by Megan McDowell, Ottessa Moshfegh, Samanta Schweblin and Alejandro Zambra.
Of Wilson’s winning story, McDowell said: “From the first paragraph, ‘Leaving Night Country’ catches us with its incredible narrative voice. Wilson has a keen sense of music and rhythm. We are left with a sense of wonder.”
Founded and organised by the Madrid bookshop Desperate Literature and now in its seventh year, the Desperate Literature Short Fiction Prize was launched in 2017 to "provide a holistic framework of opportunities for writers of innovative and boundary-pushing short fiction".
This year the prize has partnered with 13 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 2025.
The partner journals for the 2024 prize are Kill Your Darlings in Australia, Gorse Journal in Ireland, Helter Skelter in India, and the UK publications Tenement Press, The London Magazine, Prototype, The Second Shelf and Minor Literature[s], and they will all have the opportunity to publish pieces from the 2024 shortlist.
