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Comma Press

@commapress

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Short fiction from the UK & beyond • Northern Soul Northern Publisher of the Year • IFFP winner • Founder of the Northern Fiction Alliance.

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ROMANCE & RELATIONSHIPS ❤️
Online Short Story Course w/ @lifeinthechlolane ✍

📅 Nov 24 - Feb 2
📌 Online Via Zoom
🎫 Tickets via Link in Bio

Romantic fiction is one of those wide-ranging genres that means many things to many people. From #cosyromance to #YA, #romantasy to #romcom, the world of romantic and relationship writing has something for everyone.

Its appeal stretches back through history and remains just as relevant to readers today – romance tells us about ourselves and our world, and provides endlessly fertile ground for creative writers. After all, everyone deserves to be loved.

What does romance fiction mean to you? What tropes make your heart soar? Who do you think needs greater representation in love stories? And just how important is a Happily Ever After?

Explore all these questions and more in a supportive and engaging online group designed to spark conversation and creative thinking.

Flex your fiction muscles with guided writing exercises, explore a range of romantic short stories from throughout history, and create your own narratives.

Over the course of six sessions on Zoom, you’ll work on two to three short stories, with your best work published in a Comma Press anthology.

🎫 Tickets £150
Bursary discounts available for underrepresented writers or those on low income.

📅 WHEN & WHERE?
Online Via Zoom. 6-8pm on Tuesdays
Nov 24, Dec 8, 22,
Jan 5, 19, Feb 2

#shortstories #writingcourse #onlinecourse #writingcourses #writersofinstagram #amwriting #amwritingromance #amwritingromantasy #amwritingromcom by @commapress

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19 days ago

👻 THE CLASSIC HORROR STORY
Short Story Course with Andy Murray

🎫 Tickets in bio!
📅 Wed Sep 30-Dec 9
📌 Online Via Zoom

Horror is a thoroughly established genre - a thriving industry with a million different interpretations and reinventions. But its essential tenets and core techniques were first established by pioneering writers of the early 20th Century.

For this new online course, held over six sessions as the nights grow long and dark, we’ll look into some of the stories that helped to forge the genre - to see what we can learn from them, and how they continue to inspire fresh writing today.

📌 Online Via Zoom

🎫 Tickets £150
Bursary Discounts Available

📧 commapublishing@yahoo.com to apply for a discounted place or to avoid booking fees.

📅 Wednesdays 6-8pm
Sep 30, Oct 14, 28
Nov 11, 25, Dec 9

#horror #horrorwriting #horrorwriters #amwritinghorror #writersofig #writersofinstagram #writingcourse #onlinecourse by @commapress

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2 months ago

A packed salon on Thursday, @guanghwabookshop, thank you to the bookshop's team for the brilliant organisation and promoting! It was fascinating to hear Cai Jun's literary worldview. We had great questions from the audience. It so good to finally meet Mr Cai after working with him on Sinophagia. He's great with plot, pacing and has deep humanist concerns, I do hope have the opportunity of bringing you his crime and mystery novels. #books #crimefiction #horrorfiction #chinese #sff by @commapress

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20 hours ago

The Wasteland Courier 废土送货人 by He Xi 何夕, one of China's four great #scifi masters, and emerging writer He Zun 何尊. In the doomsday era, an agent tracks down a Lone Wolf courier to investigate a delayed delivery. Of war, art and memory. Translated by @gigitranslates, translator of classical and contemporary plays for RSC and Jin Yong's novels.

#books #sff #chinese by @commapress

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2 days ago

Described by Folding Rock Magazine as "a riotous, textured collection of local voices", The Book of Cardiff takes us from the Papal visit of 1982, to the slayer of the mythical Llanishen Bear (famed from an early Facebook hoax), to a future in which the city no longer exists! This anthology mixes some of Cardiff's most exciting contemporary writing with classic short stories from Dannie Abse and Leonora Brito.

"This anthology proves that Cardiff's greatest strength is its people. Messy, imaginative, defiant, and endless worth writing about." – The Edit Wales

Edited by Isabella Barber and Martha O'Brien
Featuring: Dannie Abse, Declan Andrews, Hanan Issa, Martha O'Brien, John L. Williams, Leonora Brito, Leo Drayton (translated by Magred Elen Wiliam), Emma Harney, Jon Blake, Deborah Kay Davies and Alistair Reynolds.

"Essential reading for anyone wishing to understand the modern heart of Wales." – Buzz Magazine by @commapress

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4 days ago

Title Reveal 5 of China +100

The Moon Returns 月归来 by Zhao Haihong 赵海虹

Celebrate #midautumnfestival with this story by another major female voice in 20th century #Chinese #scifi. A Lunarian engineer arrives on Earth to work on a giant dam project, but struggles to adjust to the environment and society, will he be able to reconnect with his ancestry? Translated by @commapress Emerging Translator Prize winner, Andrew Rule.

#books #sff #chinese #scifi #anthologies by @commapress

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4 days ago

A great man, Dr Refaat Alareer – poet, teacher and activist – would have turned 46 today. Instead, he was murdered by zionist occupation forces in a targeted airstrike on 6 December 2023, alongside his brother and sister and four of his nieces and nephews in the third month of the ongoing genocide, in the 75th year of the occupation of Palestine.

Here, he is remembered by Reem Hamadaqa and Ra Page in articles published by @mondoweiss and @electronicintifada in 2025.

We dream and pray,
Clinging to life even harder
Every time a dear one's life
Is forcibly rooted up.
We live.
We live.
We do.

‐ Refaat Alareer, 'And We Live On...' by @commapress

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5 days ago

'It’s no surprise, then, that Palestine +100 editor Ghalayini has returned six years later with Palestine Minus One, an anthology of short horror stories set “on the eve of the Nakba.'

Basma Ghalayini interviewed by @elisemadeline13 as part of a new article on Palestinian horror fiction for @inkstickmedia ✍

🔗 Read the article via the link in bio

📔 PALESTINE - 1

How can literature respond to a genocide. Is it even possible to write fiction after witnessing the horrors inflicted on Gaza?

The contributors to Palestine - 1 attempt to answer this question, ignoring the lie that history began in October 2023, and addressing the great crime that underpins the entire occupation: the invasion and systematic annihilation of Palestine in 1948, displacing over 750,000 people, and stealing 80% of their land – the event collectively remembered as ‘the Nakba’.

Using literary devices typically associated with the horror genre – dreams, visions, ghosts, djinn, doppelgangers and divided selves – these authors explore the lead-up to 1948 and its aftermath, inviting readers to question the very realities that we, safe in the West, have built for ourselves.

If the first casualty of war is truth, the last is often the peace of mind of those who are invaded – a generational trauma, in the case of Palestinians, that haunts them in a language that fantasy and speculative fiction can certainly speak to.

Featuring mazen_maarouf, @selmadabbagh, @ahjaber25, Anwar Hamed, @mahmoudshukair41, lianabadr, @linameruane, Abdalmuti Maqboul, @intifadabatata, Yara El-Ghadban, @ibtisam.azem & @babaamaadizidoons. by @commapress

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6 days ago

THE BBC NATIONAL SHORT STORY AWARD 2026 🐋🎉

An ageing war veteran, living alone in the Australian outback, tries to spruce himself up for a rare, and nerve-wracking, family reunion...

A mother watches an intimate scene from a much-loved musical with her young daughter, the way she once watched it with her own mother...

After reporting a disturbance at home, a boy hides and waits for the police to arrive, not knowing if they’ll come in time...

The stories shortlisted for the 2026 BBC National Short Story Award are packed with small, intricate moments that unexpectedly reveal whole lifetimes of searching and struggle. A woman finds an injured slow worm in her lawn and watches as its mate returns to comfort it.

A coastal rower climbs out of her boat, endangering herself and her crew, just to hear the sound of a minke whale singing beneath them.

For all their attempts to define themselves as solitary and self-reliant, modern and cynical, each of these characters gets caught off guard by a sudden chance to reconnect, a chance to start again from scratch.

Stories from @caoilinn_hughes, Lucy Caldwell @peopleearthskystars, @merrynglover @laurabeatty_writer, and Cherise Saywell ✍

🔗 ORDER VIA LINK IN POST

📻 Listen to the live announcement of the winning story on BBC Radio 4 Front Row - 7:15pm on September 29th

#bbcnationalshortstoryaward #bbcnssa #nationalshortstoryaward #radio4 #frontrow #bbcfrontrow by @commapress

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6 days ago

Title Reveal 4 of China +100

This is a Good Path 这是一条好的路

by well-known science-fi writer 糖匪 Tang Fei, whose creative works span multidisciplinary art forms. How would longevity impact on humanity? Dystopian Chinese Little Shop of Horrors. Translated by award-winning Singaporean author and poet @judtheobscure

#books #sff #chinese #scifi by @commapress

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6 days ago

Head over to BBC Sounds to catch the last of 5 readings from The BBC National Short Story Award shortlist 🎉

A doctor grieves for her husband and tries to understand the damage being done to the natural world as human intervention continues to threaten catastrophe.

Sian Thomas reads 'Two Minutes to Midnight' by @laurabeatty_writer ✍

Order The BBC National Short Story Award 2026 Shortlist anthology now via the link in this post! 📘🔗

Catch up on all 5 readings on BBC Sounds, & tune into Radio 4 'Front Row' at 7:15pm on Tuesday September 29 for the live announcement of the winning story 📻

Laura Beatty is the author of two biographies, two novels, two genre-defying books (a mix of travel, history, memoir and fiction) and, recently, two plays. Her first novel, ‘Pollard’ – which the Observer called a “fierce and wonderful” book – won the Authors’ Club First Novel Award as well as being shortlisted for the Ondaatje prize for books which evoke the spirit of place. Her most recent book, ‘Looking for A’, was shortlisted for the Runciman prize. She has also written various short stories, introductions, and reviews. Oxford educated, she began writing in her twenties, while working in the art world in London and New York. She worked for a long time in the voluntary sector, while bringing up children, and then trained to work as a Place2Be counsellor with children up to age 14. Now, she teaches writing both privately and, as a fellow of the Royal Literary Fund, in the NHS and recovery colleges nationwide.

#NSSA2026 #BBCNSSA2026 #NationalShortStoryAward #BBCNationalShortStoryAward #ShortStories #ShortFiction by @commapress

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7 days ago

Title Reveal 3

Miracle Grass 神仙草
by 凌晨 Ling Chen.

One of the most important female voices of 20th century Chinese sci-fi. A deadly virus breaks out among the crew on an exploration spaceship at the edge of the Kuiper Belt, the interplanetary quest for the cure takes us from the moon, to the arid deserts of Xinjiang, and ancient ecological wilds of Guizhou. It’s a great pleasure to be translating Ling Chen, whose work I’ve long admired.

#scifi #sff #books #chinese #anthology by @commapress

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9 days ago