N G F Clark’s short story ‘Damsons’ has placed as Runner Up in the Desperate Literature Prize 2023.

The story forms part of a shortlist of eleven stories, which are published in this year’s prize anthology.

‘Damsons’ is a meditation on the transience of place, ritual, memory, and the seasons, which competition judge Mariana Enríquez hailed as her top pick. Author Enríquez is known for her novel Our Share of Night and short story collection The Dangers of Smoking in Bed.

She said: “I love the simplicity with which ‘Damsons’ embeds the Weird, along with the notion of ancient gods, into the familiar, the everyday. The story’s quiet details shape a text approaching folk horror, where innocence conceals an ancient rite brimming with potent menace.”

N G F Clark joins fellow Runner Up Andrea Mason (‘Today, at the Dump, the World is in the Bin’) and Winner Hadley Franklin (‘Falling’) in winning a consultation with a literary agent from Johnson & Alcock, in addition to prize money made possible by The de Groot Foundation.

All three authors along with the full shortlist see their stories published in the Eleven Stories Desperate Literature Prize Shortlist Selection, available from Desperate Literature as a digital edition and forthcoming in print (Autumn 2023).

The competition judges were authors Mariana Enríquez, Ottessa Moshfegh and PEN Translation Prize winning literary translator Tiffany Tsao.