The Queen Mary Small Press Fiction Prize 2026 shortlist

It is our pride and pleasure to announce the shortlist for the Queen Mary Small Press Fiction Prize 2026. Each of these five presses is championing the best fiction being written in the UK and Republic of Ireland. We salute their dedication to injecting fearlessness and freedom back into our literary culture and hope that their share of the prize will help them continue the good work. The shortlisted presses, authors and their titles follow below in no particular order.

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The winner event wiLL be held at Queen Mary University London on March 25th 2026 in a two-part event, a Panel and The Winner Announcement, Click HERE and HERE reserve your places now.

Thank you Again to every press that made a submission and to our HARDWORKING judges, Marina Benjamin, Susanna Crossman and Stu hennigan

Our judges Write: “Jackie Ess's Darryl is an exceptional novel about identity, a cuckold husband, a life unravelling. In clean, tightly-paced prose, told through Darryl‘s white, middle-aged voice, Ess gives us a veering kink anti-hero, his complex varied sexual encounters and experiments with drink, therapy, and drugs .The author achieves an extraordinary feat, as we slowly empathise with Darryl, witness his pride in his wife’s partners, his humiliation, power and defeat. Published by Divided Publishing House, an independent press producing significant books, like Darryl, which ‘cannot resolve their contradictions.’” - Susanna Crossman

“Jackie Ess’s novel is a wry and brainy take on kink. White, middle-aged and full of angst, Darryl likes watching his wife have sex with other men but then he falls for one of them himself. Perhaps he’s gay, he thinks, or maybe he is trans. Ess plays with the identity issues of the day in prose that is winningly transparent, questioning, clever, yet always light. It’s a delightful portrait of doubtful masculinity and sexual encounter as a portal to self-discovery. Divided Publishing has the best mission statement I’ve ever seen, serving writers who ‘cannot balance or resolve their contradictions’.” - Marina Benjamin

“Darryl by Jackie Ess is a novel that wears the richness of its themes lightly, exploring the endlessly complex interplay and sexual dynamics between individuals of multiple differing gender identities and sexual orientations and sexual dynamics in a way that's effortlessly readable, funny and entertaining without losing sight of the very serious real-life issues these can raise. The dead-eye laconicism of the narrator may have Gen-X in its DNA, but it’s fresh, urgent writing for now.”- Stu Hennigan

Our judges WRITE: “Stylishly written and darkly funny, Nell Osborne’s novel is a nightmarish vision of alienation and anomie, of unsatisfactory situationships and working lives defined by phoney goals and empty rituals. It brings administrative noir into the orbit of body horror—as if Ottessa Moshfegh had written Severance. Moist Books celebrates writing ‘at the fringes’ with work that amplifies unease, even disgust with the present, and Ghost Driver is the perfect mascot for this ambition.” - Marina Benjamin

“Ghost Driver by Nell Osborne is a brilliant vital eerie exploration of Malary and the horror of her (and our) contemporary lives. In this novel, Nell Osborne smartly channels Freud’s uncanny, the familiar becomes unfamiliar as Malary navigates with creeping horror: office politics, body dysmorphia, drunk nights, relationships and a giant fly. Published by Moist Books, this funny, dark and highly intelligent book encapsulates their mission statement to champion literature emerging from unease, books written on ‘the fringe’.” - Susanna Crossman

“Ghost Driver by Nell Osborne (Moist): A shape-shifting gem powered by an effortlessly hip voice that crackles with restless energy. Its boundary-blurring blending of the personal with the political, and the uncanny with the mundane, is as beguiling and fresh as modern fiction gets. This refusal of easy categorisation, one of the novel's most appealing characteristics, is entirely in synch with the ethos of its publisher, for whom clear distinctions between styles, forms and genres are simply barriers there to be broken.” - Stu Hennigan

Our judges WRITE: “Rebecca Gransden has written a post-apocalyptic novel of quiet unease, the end of things coming like a thief in the night—except the night is red-hued, grainy, blurred, the landscape blasted and littered with dead and dying bodies. There is a sense of time having stopped. Even language is disintegrating, which Gransden’s poetic genius captures in heart-stoppingly affecting monosyllabic prose. Once read this book won’t be forgotten. Tangerine Press is unique, artisanal, visionary, uncompromising.” - Marina Benjamin

“A mesmerising dystopian novel, Figures Crossing the Field Towards the Group by Rebecca Gransden is a reading experience. We tumble into this book, as though the writing itself were a broken landscape that we enter, seized. Through breath-taking prose, we travel on a seismic journey with a young woman through a society demolished, where bodies rot, and geology has erupted, dissolved. This year Tangerine Press celebrate a decade of publishing ‘misfits, mavericks and misanthropes’ producing beautiful handmade often limited-edition books. Gransden’s glorious text, in its second print run, is another jewel in their crafted collection.” - Susanna Crossman

“Figures Crossing the Field Towards the Group by Rebecca Gransden is a work of breathtaking originality in form, style and execution. Gransden’s startling stylistic innovations create a language that’s familiar and alien in equal measure, a soon-to-come Newspeak stripped back to the bare bones that simultaneously recalls the alliterative poetry of the Anglo-Saxons. Perennial mavericks Tangerine Press have been quietly publishing writing and writers from the margins for the last two decades in formats that are often works of art in themselves; Gransden's text, with its ancient memories of a mythic future, is another gem to add to their hugely impressive collection.” - Susanna Crossman

Our judges WRite: “This novel explodes with energy, urgency and acute observational insight. Saima Begum’s portrayal of women prisoners seized during Bangladesh’s war of independence, confined to a cramped cell, and serially abused by their captors, is unsparing in its horrors and yet so tender in the telling of how these women endure and survive. Begum’s is an entirely fresh literary voice. The First Jasmines is a luminous example of Hajar Press’s political remit to publish radical work by people of colour.” - Marina Benjamin

“An extraordinary debut novel, The First Jasmines by Saima Begum is a fiercely lyrical work, recounting the devastating untold story of 'Birangona' - women kidnapped and raped by the Pakistan Army during the Bangladesh Liberation War of 1971. Begum shows great prowess in dealing with the horrors of sexual violence and imprisonment in a poetic, deeply human voice. Vividly written, with unforgettable characters, spirit burns bright through these pages. Founded in 2020 by Brekhna Aftab and Farhaana Arefin Hajar Press produces books written by people of colour; The First Jasmines echoes Hajar Press's politically engaged statement about their publishing vision, that books can be both ‘beautiful and revolutionary.’” -Susanna Crossman

“The First Jasmines by Saima Begum, from Hajar Press is a coruscating novel with a savagely visual voice that uses the medium of fiction to bring the darkest of hidden real-life stories to a wider audience than a work of historical non-fiction on the same subject might expect to reach. Blisteringly told, utterly real, and laudably unflinching in its willingness to lay bare the moral complexities and contradictions of how these women were treated in the aftermath of their terrible ordeal, this is a bold and important publication.” - Stu Hennigan

Our judges write: “A playful, poignant, capacious novel about the stymieing effects of life in a small Irish village, but lovingly done, with restlessness and connection given equal weight. David Brennan writes with élan, taking pleasure in word, sound and rhythm, and in characters torn between big dreams and blighted realities, whose inner truths and contradictions are exposed by an all-seeing spirit narrator—a wandering soul, long-dead, who likes to lurk in the hollows of trees and the carcasses of dead animals. Spit is work of quality and depth, vibrant, affecting and readable; the best kind of literary fiction that époque champions.” Marina Benjamin

“Spit by David Brennan is the captivating story of a 600-year-old tantalising spirit, and an Irish village where Danny Muchalan has lost the plot, drinking himself into oblivion. The spirit of Spit creeps through the pages of this novel, intertwining past, present and future. In a deft feat, in his second novel, David Brennan combines contemporary Irish rural life with a beautifully-written folk-tale, exploring how and if we can escape the past. Spit is published by the excellent  Brighton-based époque press, consistently producing high-quality international literary fiction.” - Susanna Crossman

“Spit by David Brennan is A wonderfully warm, funny and inventive work that deploys an ingenious narrative sleight-of-hand to allow an omniscient, supernatural entity to observe the all-too-human existence of the inhabitants of a tiny Irish village. Spit is typical of the excellently curated and consistently high-quality literary fiction that époque have been championing for years so this shortlisting is richly deserved.” - Stu Hennigan

Each shortlisted press will receive a further £1000 than was awarded at longlist stage, split 70% / 30% between press and writer. And, for the first time in the prize’s history, the overall finalist author won’t just get the glory but receive a 5-day writing retreat with our partners at the Hawkwood Centre for Future Thinking. Stay tuned for our finalist announcement on March 25th 2026.