What do you look for in a story?
I looked for a short story with teeth. There were a lot of beautiful pieces of writing submitted for the collection, and many of them had fine gentle plots, but I favoured stories that had a sharp and powerful punch, a real bite to them. There were a few exceptions, however: some pieces I included because they were particularly clever or wry or in some other way caught my fancy.
What are some of your favourite or noteworthy pieces in the collection?
It seems unfair to single anyone out - I'm fond of them all. David Astle's 'Oxtales' is strikingly original. Emma Schwarz's 'Sidney' made me cringe, as the author intended. Sean Rabin's 'I Can Hear the Ice Singing' is compellingly weird. But all of them are great - they had to be. Over 800 stories were submitted - only the best made the cut.