Commonwealth Short Story Prize

The Shortlist

• 'Berlin Lends a Hand' , Jonathan Tel
  United Kingdom
• 'Chicken Boy' , Lynne Robertson
  New Zealand
• 'Dancing with Ma' , Harriet Anena
  Uganda
• 'Empathy' , Cheryl S. Ntumy
  Ghana
• 'Ghillie’s Mum' , Lynda Clark
  United Kingdom
• 'Goat' , Sally Craythorne
  United Kingdom
• 'Hitler Hates You' , Michelle Sacks
  South Africa
• 'Holding On, Letting Go' , Sandra Norsen
  Australia
• 'Juju' , Obi Calvin Umeozor
  Nigeria
• 'Jyamitik Zadukor' , Imran Khan
  Bangladesh
• 'Matalasi' , Jenny Bennett-Tuionetoa
  Samoa
• 'Night Fishing' , Karen Kwek
  Singapore
• 'Nobody’s Wife' , Chris Mansell
  Australia
• 'Passage' , Kevin Jared Hosein
  Trinidad and Tobago
• 'Son Son’s Birthday' , Sharma Taylor
  Jamaica
• 'Soundtracker' , Christopher Evans
  Canada
• 'Tahiti' , Brendan Bowles
  Canada
• 'Talk of The Town' , Fred Khumalo
  South Africa
• 'The Boss' , Breanne Mc Ivor
  Trinidad and Tobago
• 'The Divine Pregnancy in a Twelve-Year-Old Woman' , Sagnik Datta
  India
• 'True Happiness' , Efua Traoré
  Nigeria
• 'A Girl Called Wednesday' , Kritika Pandey
  India
• 'After the Fall' , James Smart
  United Kingdom
• 'An Elephant in Kingston' , Marcus Bird
  Jamaica

• Berlin Lends a Hand

  Jonathan Tel

  United Kingdom

  A German couple are hosting a Syrian refugee in their home in Berlin. Tensions arise.

  ‘Here we are again at the Lambrechts. A dozen of us, fifteen, then the Rowinskis, who are always so punctual, come half an hour late – their refugee had a panic attack, and they had to wrap him in his comfort blanket; they feel guilty about leaving him alone, but on the other hand … and of course we understand, we understand: the Lambrechts is the one place we can speak freely, we can confess our doubts, our mixed motives, our wondering whether after all it is worth it, and we can reassure one another that these feelings are normal, and yes, the Lambrechts declare, notwithstanding the challenges let us not forget the successes, Rudi’s refugee passed the German proficiency test at B2 level and has secured an apprenticeship in a carpet factory.’

  Jonathan Tel won the Commonwealth Short Story Prize in 2015. He has also recently won the Sunday Times EFG Short Story Prize, and the V S Pritchett Story Prize from the Royal Society for Literature. He is writing a collection of linked stories about Syrians in Germany, The Syria-Berlin Border, including this story.

• Chicken Boy

  Lynne Robertson

  New Zealand

  We are all attracted to danger at some point in our lives and none so much as when we are children. Set in an abandoned quarry, Chicken Boy is about three children, one of whom has a secret. The story unleashes the harshness and beauty of childhood.

  ‘The seagull watches the children crawling up the abandoned quarry. If you held a lens up to the sun, you could burn their tiny bodies to cinders. One of the children stops. Shielding her eyes against the sun she looks up. The seagull’s head tilts. Its beak opens impossibly wide. Uhhhhh, uhhhh owwwww. Its beak snaps shut.

  “It’s laughing at us. I hate it,” David picks up a stone and chucks it at the seagull.

  “You have to throw it up higher if you want to hit it.” Kate watches David’s stone vanish into nothingness at the bottom of the cliff.

  David pulls down his hat. “I can’t get sunburnt. Mum says I’ve got beautiful skin.”

  Lynne Robertson is a recent graduate of the International Institute of Modern Letters creative writing course at Victoria University of Wellington. She is the recipient of a project scholarship which she is using to prepare her collection of short stories for publication. Her work has been published in Turbine and Radio New Zealand. Lynne is passionate about writing from the perspective of characters who are outsiders. She started writing last year.

• Dancing with Ma

  Harriet Anena

  Uganda

  Dancing with Ma’ is the story of Kec-kom, a teenager forced to become an adult when she grows up and realizes that her mother died while giving birth to her. The failure of her father to shield Kec-kom from mistreatment and abuse from her grandmother and aunt, forces the girl to take matters into her own hands. But it will take more than walking away for her to regain her freedom.

  ‘They found Ma in a banana plantation, knees to chest, arms stretched forward, as if she was trying to scoop something towards her bosom. She was naked from the waist down, underwear and skirt soaked and reddened, next to her.

  Their attention quickly shifted to you, the baby lying beside her, thumb trying to find mouth, tears dry on face like scales, legs kicking the air. When the thing between your legs confirmed that you were a girl, they named you Kec-kom.’

  Harriet Anena is a poet and short story writer from Uganda. She is the author of A Nation in Labour, a poetry collection. Anena’s short stories and poems have appeared or is forthcoming in the Caine Prize anthology, Jalada Africa, New Daughters of Africa, Short Story Day Africa’s I.D. anthology, Enkare Review, FEMRITE anthologies, Babishai Niwe Poetry anthologies, Writivism, among others.

• Empathy

  Cheryl S. Ntumy

  Ghana

  A young fugitive has made it his mission to ease the suffering of others. His intentions are pure, but his methods are drastic – and dangerous.

  ‘They found another one in the night. A girl this time. Young, not much younger than Aten. Maybe fourteen. They say she hung herself with trapwire and it was too tight, too sharp, and it sliced her throat. It was the bleeding that killed her, before her neck broke.

  It’s hard to know what is rumour and what is true. A girl is dead, that much is certain. I lie awake in the dark and try not to think of her body hanging from the rafters, of her terrified soul trying desperately to untether itself from that body, of the people she left behind.

  That makes twelve now. Twelve deaths. Twelve suicides.’

  Cheryl S. Ntumy is a Ghanaian writer and literary and communications consultant. Her work includes several published short stories and novels in various genres, as well as media articles, scripts, story development and communications for creative public engagement projects. You can see samples of her work at https://thelitchicksite.wordpress.com/ or https://lettersfromthoth.wordpress.com/.

• Ghillie’s Mum

  Lynda Clark

  United Kingdom

  Ghillie’s mum would be just like everyone else’s if she could only stop turning into animals.

  ‘When he was a baby, Ghillie’s mother was mostly an orangutan. Like most mothers, she’d cradle him in her arms and blow raspberries on his belly, but unlike most mothers, she’d also change his nappy with her feet. In those early days, as far as he could recall, it was only at bath time she was other animals. A baby elephant to squirt him with water from her trunk, a porpoise to bat his rubber duck around the bath with her domed head, a dumbo octopus making him laugh with her big, flapping earlike fins, and grasping his bath toys with her many arms.’

  Lynda Clark is a writer and former videogame producer. She’s currently combining these two interests by undertaking a PhD in interactive narrative at Nottingham Trent University. Her short stories often get described as ‘strange’ and have appeared in several collections from small independent presses. Most recently, her story Grandma’s Feast Day was shortlisted for the 2017 Cambridge Short Story Prize.

  Listen to the author talk about their submission
• Goat

  Sally Craythorne

  United Kingdom

  On the first day of the thaw, a brother and sister work to bury the latest body on a dying farm. But, death is an easy business when compared to the complications of life.

  ‘On the first day of the thaw, they started to dig. The body was three days dead.

  Her brother, Joe, took the brunt of the work, cut turf and hefted. Ma had chosen a place under the line of trees, a good fifty feet from the stables. Tree roots were a problem. Ellie drove the spade edge along the line of the cut. Joe glanced up, spat and nodded, before bending back to task.’

  Sally Craythorne lives on a smallholding in Norfolk with her family. She is a graduate of the MA Creative Writing at UEA. Her first novel, How You See Me, was published in 2015 by Myriad Editions. She is working on her second.

• Hitler Hates You

  Michelle Sacks

  South Africa

  A socially-awkward and recently bereaved young woman flees her American hometown for her ancestral one. Alone in Berlin, she struggles to connect with the city and its people, until one night, she meets a young Bulgarian cleaner at a supper club.

  ‘Attend A Supper Club is #29 on the list of 30 things you can do to meet people in a new city. You can also Join A Singing Group, Meet Over Manicures and Take Up Tango. As I am tone-deaf, a nail-biter and largely averse to touching strangers, I am currently in a basement waiting for a main course and trying to engage with potential new friends. Small talk is my nemesis, but I push through.

  Yes, I’m from the USA. No, I speak no German. Yes, I’ll learn.’

  Michelle Sacks is the author of the short story collection, Stone Baby and the novel, You Were Made for This. She is currently based in Switzerland.

• Holding On, Letting Go

  Sandra Norsen

  Australia

  Jim, a self-confessed bossy old coot, finds young Rosie on the side of a remote road and opens his home and his heart to her. Together they revisit painful experiences, trying to discover whether a relationship can be too badly broken to hold on to.

  ‘She is lost in the landscape. The road reaches away like an outstretched hand, one slender finger pointing into the hollow between hills dried to a golden blankness. Oily clouds loop across the tops of the mounds and a barometric blanket presses down around her. She inclines her face towards the louring sky, feeling the breeze lift the hair from her bare shoulders, hearing it rattle through the trees that crowd down behind her, breathing their secretive darkness. She shivers. It’s five thirty and the light is failing. She wishes she could disappear into the wind.’

  Sandra Norsen was born and raised in Tasmania, home of the Tasmanian devil and the only island state of Australia. She achieved a BA in Literary Studies whilst living in a double-decker bus in the bush, typing her assignments by candle light. Sandra currently lives in the historical goldfields of central Victoria, Australia and teaches English and Literature at a rural secondary college. Her writing has appeared in literary journals and online publications.

• Juju

  Obi Calvin Umeozor

  Nigeria

  Two friends set out to rescue their childhood friend who was last seen at the home of a notorious juju priest. But they soon realise that nothing is what it seems.

  ‘The morning Dave comes to see me about his problem, I’m in a foul mood. I mean, I’ve been in one most my adult life whenever there isn’t a bottle of Guinness in my hand, but that day – late in December – is particularly bad. The week before, my boss at the noodles factory on the edge of town called all five of us in my work crew into her office; told us some customers had found bugs in their noodle packs, and, before we could even mutter any protest, she laid down the hammer. Then a couple of days later, Nkechi just up and left me. Said I was “holding her back.” Five years tossed down the stinker; and she didn’t even look back at me the morning she dragged her Samsonite bag out the door. Took my favourite blanket with her too, the Grinch.’

  Obi Calvin Umeozor received his B.A. in English from the University of Port Harcourt, Nigeria and taught English Literature before moving to the States in 2015, where he obtained an MFA in Creative Writing from Florida State University. His work has appeared and is forthcoming in the New Orleans Review, Shift and others. And he will begin a PhD in Creative Writing and Literature at the University of Houston this fall.

• Jyamitik Zadukor

  Imran Khan

  Bangladesh

  The Geometric Wizard depicts the pathos of partition of Bengal (1947), which left a deep wound on the breast of Bengal. Millions of people became homeless and took refuge. The Geometric Wizard shows how an artist, being separated from his wife because of the partition, revolts artistically against the political business the capital of which is religion.

  ‘My grandfather had an elder brother, he used to live in Calcutta. He was a journalist with the Doinik Azaad newspaper, alongside which he practised the arts – writing stories and painting. Some of his stories were published in Doinik Sougat. We had been told the great poet Nazrul had summoned him to lavish praise on those stories. He once had a solo exhibition of his paintings at the National Museum in Calcutta. The other thing he did was to write long letters to Dada, my grandfather. Some of those letters are still in my father’s cupboard. He chanced upon them one day while cleaning the shelves, after which the memories came flooding back. I have read the letters.’

  Imran Khan was born in the Bagerhat district of Bangladesh. He completed his undergraduate and postgraduate study in English Language and Literature at Jahangirnagar Univeristy, Bangladesh. Currently, he is working for the Department of English Language and Literature at Central Women’s University, Dhaka. He is a fiction writer who writes about contemporary society and its relationship with history.

  Jyamitik Zadukor is translated from Bengali into English by Arunava Sinha, a translator based in New Delhi, India. He was born and grew up in Kolkata. More than forty of his translations have been published so far. Besides India, his translations have been published in the UK and the US in English, and in several European and Asian countries through further translation.

• Matalasi

  Jenny Bennett-Tuionetoa

  Samoa

  This is a story about difference, identity and the high cost of conformity. Set in a conservative Pacific Island society, Matalasi plunges the reader into the inner world of an individual forced to choose between identity and survival.

  ‘He slammed the door shut and leaned against it. He had to get away. From the constant yapping that the dogs were keeping up in the back yard. From the squeals and laughter of the unattended children on the front porch. From the women shouting and chopping meat in the kitchen. From his mother’s nasal voice fussing over the bridesmaids. From his aunts arguing in their very, very loud voices over who had lost the jewellery Aunty Luisa had brought from Australia. Voices that announced to the neighbours the unparalleled importance of their ‘āiga and of their child’s wedding.’

  Jenny Bennett-Tuionetoa is a human rights advocate who seeks to use writing as a means of raising awareness about LGBTQIA issues in the Pacific Islands. She was born and raised in Samoa where she currently lives with her two young daughters.

  Listen to the author talk about their submission
• Night Fishing

  Karen Kwek

  Singapore

  A son and father navigate the channels, at once grandiose and fragile, of a lifelong bond.

  ‘My father grips the Singapore Angler and I have to prise his fingers off the monstrous ikan kerapu on its cover. The magazine comes free at last, the great fish flopping onto the bed. The nurse snaps on a pair of surgical gloves and wiggles fat little sausage fingers. “Let’s get that catheter out, so you can go home once you’ve done a normal pee.” She parts his hospital robe and I turn away to give him some privacy, but he touches my arm: Stay. “Now, just relax, Uncle,” she coos. He shoots me a look: They only tell you to relax when it’s going to be painful.’

  Karen Kwek used to work as a book editor while dreaming about writing fiction herself, so it’s a gift for her to have had her short stories appear in recent local anthologies. Among her favourite short fiction writers are Flannery O’Connor and Alistair MacLeod. She enjoys her family, friends, good books and a great cup of tea, and is grateful when, occasionally, the fullness of life overflows into a story.

• Nobody’s Wife

  Chris Mansell

  Australia

  From the dust-honey light of the pawn shop (in a good neighbourhood, our heroine affirms) to the wild streets, Mrs Bannerbain is in interest in the stories but is led astray.

  ‘I am nobody’s wife. That is, I am a wife, a wife of a particular person called Mr Bannerbain, but I am not owned by it in the way it’s said: “This is my wife”, as “This is my broomstick”, or “This is my cat. I can stroke her and put her out whenever I please.” How dare you. If I am anything in respect of him, he is my familiar, and I his. We circle around each other like a pair of dull moggies, bung-eyed and showing the scars of the battles we have fought. Not with each other – the world assails us and we do not know how to win. But we have the shop.’

  Among Chris Mansell’s latest publications are Verge, Stung, Stung More, Spine Lingo, and Schadenvale Road – a collection of short stories published by IP, Brisbane. Seven Stations (a song cycle with music by Andrew Batt-Rawden) was released by Hospital Hill on CD. Her site is chrismansell.com.

  She won the Queensland Premier’s Award for Poetry, Amelia Chapbook Award (USA) and the Meanjin Dorothy Porter Poetry Prize and has been short-listed for the National Book Council Award and the NSW Premier’s Award.

• Passage

  Kevin Jared Hosein

  Trinidad and Tobago

  A man, going through a mid-life crisis, decides to hike up a mountain. Along the way, he finds the skull of a child near a mysterious house.

  ‘As all Saturday nights went, we slipped by the wives and find weselves down by The Tricky Jester. The name made it sound like an establishment outta King Arthur days, but don’t get fooled—the place is just as grimy and ragadang as all them other hole-in-the-wall pubs you coulda find here in central Trinidad. Thinking bout it, you don’t see much of those anymore. The Tricky Jester, you leave your shame at the door. The new places, you have to comb your hair and put on perfume just to get a drink. Times change, you know. World going one way, people another.’

  Kevin Jared Hosein is the author of three books, The Beast of Kukuyo (Burt Award for Caribbean Literature), The Repenters (OCM Bocas Prize for Fiction shortlist) and Littletown Secrets. He is the 2015 Caribbean regional winner of the Commonwealth Short Story Prize, and has been twice shortlisted for the Small Axe Prize for Prose. His work has been featured in numerous publications, such as Lightspeed, adda and most recently, We Mark Your Memory: Writing from the Descendants of Indenture.

  Listen to the author talk about their submission
• Son Son’s Birthday

  Sharma Taylor

  Jamaica

  The story Son Son’s birthday touches on themes of family, mental illness, perception, reality, loss and redemption. After years of separation, Dina has an encounter that convinces her she has been reunited with her long lost son.

  ‘Mi wake up this morning like mi moving under water that too green. Something mi cyaan see siddung pon top of mi…weighing mi dung. Mi nearly knock over the enamel cup on the side-table next to the mattress. The same mattress that sag in the middle like a ole donkey wid a bruk back. The likkle room – weh mi live in for the last 20 years– all of a sudden seem strange. Like mi turn duppy – lost inna smaddy else nightmare. Is like the Lord God Almighty Himself tek Him giant hand dem and lift me up inna the night and rest mi down pon a different woman bed.’

  Sharma Taylor is a corporate attorney with a passion for creative writing. Her work won a medal in Barbados’s annual National Independence Festival of Creative Arts (NIFCA) Literary Competition. She has been published in the Arts Etc NIFCA Winning Words Anthology 2015/2016; Bearing Witness 1 and 2- The Best of the Observer Arts Magazine 2000/2001 and Poui: Cave Hill Journal of Creative Writing as well as online journals.

• Soundtracker

  Christopher Evans

  Canada

  Single, depressed, and kicked out of his own band, Nate offers his services as a musician-for-hire and stumbles into an unusual partnership.

  ‘Writing the ad was a struggle. It wasn’t until I was sitting at the computer—the “creative services offered” section of Craigslist open in front of me—that I realized I wasn’t totally clear myself on what I was offering, let alone how to describe it to strangers. I fussed over the wording for almost an hour. Musical Orchestrator? Audio Companion? I finally settled on:

  Soundtracker for hire. Multi-instrumentalist available to provide original musical accompaniment for special occasions or just hanging out at home. Make your wildest (musical) dreams come true. Competitive rates. Call anytime.’

  Christopher Evans is a writer and editor, based in Vancouver, Canada. His work has appeared in The New Quarterly, The Literary Review, Going Down Swinging, The Moth, Joyland, Takahe, EVENT, and others, and he is a graduate of the MFA in Creative Writing program at the University of British Columbia. Christopher has recently worked as the Prose Editor of PRISM international magazine, and currently teaches poetry to children.

• Tahiti

  Brendan Bowles

  Canada

  Girl meets boy. In prison.

  ‘At some point every Saturday afternoon for the last eight months the phone rings and I pull my fingers in my apron. I talk to Frank on my landline—it has to be a landline—for his full fifteen and we come to know each other through questions: what is your policy on, have you ever, would you ever, and one day, I hope, why did you, how could you.’

  Brendan Bowles is from Toronto, Ontario. He holds an MA from the University of Toronto and an MFA in fiction from the University of Massachusetts Amherst. He was one of two Canadian nominations for PEN International’s New Voices Award in 2013, won The Toronto Star Short Story Contest in 2014 and the RBC Bronwen Wallace Award for Emerging Writers from the Writers’ Trust of Canada in 2016. His work has been published and produced for stage and radio. He is currently a Fiction Fellow at the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown.

• Talk of The Town

  Fred Khumalo

  South Africa

  Our 11-year-old narrator is on a two-pronged mission: to help his mother elude meddlesome debt collectors; and to save the picture of Jesus Christ that’s in the family lounge “from being stolen by visitors” with their hungry eyes. VISITORS, GO GET YOUR OWN JESUS!

  ‘We claw back to the past, where we find sweet memories hiding in a corner. We grab them by their ears, drag them out of their hideout and ask them to speak to us. SPEAK TO US, MEMORIES, SPEAK TO US!

  The memories open their mouths and speak thusly: Mpumalanga township, KwaZulu Natal, circa 1979. You are 10 years of age. Your mother had the neighbours’ mouths salivating when, at the end of October the previous year, she had delivered to the house a brand-new kitchen scheme from Ellerines. And a dining room suite from Town Talk.’

  Fred Khumalo is the award-winning author of the novels Dancing the Death Drill and Bitches’ Brew among other titles. With an MA in creative writing from Wits University, he is also a Nieman Fellow (Harvard University, 2011-2012). His short story Legs of Thunder was shortlisted for the Commonwealth Short Story Prize in 2015. A stage adaptation of Death Drill will have its world premiere at Nuffield Theatre, Southampton, UK, 29 June to 14 July, 2018.

• The Boss

  Breanne Mc Ivor

  Trinidad and Tobago

  A boy goes to a job interview with the CEO of SFK Advertising. At first, the CEO asks about his résumé; but then he asks what the boy knows about Sunny ‘The Boss’ Boodram, Trinidad’s most notorious drug lord.

  “What’s your name?” the guard asks. He’s wearing a navy-blue shirt with a clip-on tie.

  “Nathan,” the boy says.

  “Nathan what?”

  The boy peers at the building behind the guard. It’s a three-storey crowned by the company’s logo: three arrows converging into a larger arrow. A light-up sign reads SFK ADVERTISING.

  “Listen to me young man, no one goes in that building unless I write their name in this book.” The guard holds up a hardcover notebook with DENNIS written on the cover.

  “Nathan Peters.”

  Breanne Mc Ivor is a fiction writer from Diego Martin, Trinidad. She is a former national scholar who studied English at the Universities of Cambridge and Edinburgh. In 2015, her story ‘Kristoff and Bonnie’ won The Caribbean Writer’s David Hough Literary Prize. Her work has appeared in Commonwealth Writers’ adda, Akashic Books’ Duppy Thursdays, Corvus Review, and elsewhere. Breanne is currently working on her first collection of short stories.

• The Divine Pregnancy in a Twelve-Year-Old Woman

  Sagnik Datta

  India

  A twelve-year-old is pregnant with the child of God. The good villagers must overcome all the obstacles standing in the way of the divine birth, especially the mother.

  ‘One day in March, just before dawn, our whole village woke up from a dream in which we had been visited by God. When we spoke to each other in the morning, we found certain differences in our accounts.

  For some of us, God was an old man. He had a bald head and a ridged face, and was dressed in a gown of fine gold silk with broad sleeves. Some saw Him as a set of flaming eyes with long masculine eyelashes suspended in air. For some, God was just a drop of light flickering in the wind of the table fan. For Isaac, the science teacher, God was invisible, but had the voice of a woodcutter.’

  Sagnik Datta is from Siliguri, India. He has an MFA in Creative Writing from University of Texas at Austin, and a degree in Engineering Physics from Indian Institute of Technology Delhi (although he’s not sure where he has kept it). He’s currently working on a novel.

  Listen to the author talk about their submission
• True Happiness

  Efua Traoré

  Nigeria

  A troubled thirteen-year-old boy in Lagos questions his pastor’s definition of true happiness.

  Efua Traoré is a Nigerian-German writer who grew up in a little town in the south of Nigeria. For as long as she can remember, her head was always filled with little stories, but it was not until her late twenties that she discovered her passion for writing them down. After winning a Glimmer Train prize for the first 1,000 words of a novel she wrote her first book.

  Listen to the author talk about their submission
• A Girl Called Wednesday

  Kritika Pandey

  India

  A Girl Called Wednesday is a story of female companionship against the backdrop of neoliberal governance and Maoist rebellion in Jharkhand, a mineral-rich state in Central India.

  ‘Buddhni and I lie on her khatiya wondering where our bras and panties could be. Out of breath and happy we are. Her saree, blouse, petticoat, my jeans and top, they are toh easy to find yaa. They don’t slip beneath pillows and blankets or fall on the floor before wandering off under her khatiya, where, safe amidst the cobwebs, Buddhni keeps her dead parents’ clothes in two cartons of Coca Cola.

  But underwear. A whole different story underwear is. Impossible to find right after you orgasm, before rushing back to the study table without Mummy or Papa suspecting that you’ve been sleeping with the househelp. Mostly before dinner we do this.’

  Kritika Pandey grew up in Ranchi, Jharkhand. She is a fiction candidate at the MFA for Poets & Writers, UMass Amherst, where she is working on her first novel. Her work was shortlisted for the 2016 Commonwealth Short Story Prize.

• After the Fall

  James Smart

  United Kingdom

  After the Fall is about Yun, a physics student and keen climber, and her father Ling, an out of work highway planner, living in London. After the Fall is about displacement, why we tell stories, and the endurance of legends.

  ‘In China, Yun’s father, Ling, was a highway designer. He wore a suit every day, even in the field.

  ”Wherever the road goes, I will always come back to you”, Ling said.

  Now, he sits in a flat in London, lounging in sportswear and getting nothing done.

  When Yun was a child and was nervous or had a stomach ache, she would com-plain of having belly weather.

  ”All storms pass”, her father told her then. He made her peppermint tea, with ginger. ”You and your stomach both need to settle”, he said.

  Yun’s mother is called Mei. Of the belly weather, Mei said, ”you would do well not to eat so many sugar cookies.”

  James Smart is from Barnsley in the North of England. He is studying an MFA in Creative Writing at the University of East Anglia. His stories have appeared or are forthcoming in Glimmertrain, Reflex Fiction, Spelk, Friction, Spilling Ink and elsewhere. He is working on a novel and is currently seeking representation. You can find him on Twitter @notjamessmart.

• An Elephant in Kingston

  Marcus Bird

  Jamaica

  A disgruntled accountant finds himself obsessed with the origin of an Elephant which mysteriously appears in the city centre of Kingston, Jamaica.

  ‘People tell me that they saw an elephant in Kingston and I could not believe them. These were members of my family, friends, co-workers and people at my workplace. As my fingers shuffled through the ledgers I’d touch each day the numbers didn’t seem to add up. Outside, the day bright and clear with spots of white, wispy clouds became tinted with the yellow of dismay and confusion. I’m a pretty average guy. I listen to a little radio, read novels every now and then, and when I get home to my wife, I rarely do anything other than missionary if she feels frisky.’

  Marcus Bird is a writer, filmmaker and photographer who was born in Kingston Jamaica. He received his B.A in Film Production from Howard University in 2008. He has written three books, which all draw from his time as a photographer, filmmaker and world traveller, to take his readers into social scenes and places often unvisited. He currently resides in Kingston, Jamaica.