Efflorescence, a short story by Miki Lentin takes us into that time when a man bumps into a friend unexpectedly while on an evening walk, with surprising consequences. Efflorescence is part of a collection of short stories released by Miki Lentin called Inner Core, published by Afsana Press that is available to buy as an ebook and paperback with proceeds of all sales going to the refugee charity foodKIND. Miki Lentin took up writing while travelling the world with his family a few years ago. He completed an MA in Creative Writing at Birkbeck in 2020 and was a finalist in the 2020 Irish Novel Fair for his first book Winter Sun. He has been placed highly in competitions including Fish Publishing Short Memoir 2020 and 2022 and Leicester Writes and has been published in Litro, Storgy, Story Radio, MIR amongst others. Miki volunteers with refugee charity foodkind in Greece, and dreams of one day running a café again. Find him on Twitter @mikilentin or read his work on his website. https://www.mikilentin.net/my-writing  The reader was Francis Gilbert. Francis Gilbert has been writing fiction for many years. He is best known for his memoir, I’m A Teacher, Get Me Out of Here (2004 Short Books), his story of working as a young, incompetent inner-city school teacher in the 1990s. It was serialized as Radio 4’s Book at Bedtime, and spawned a sequel, Teacher on the Run (2006 Short Books).  His novel The Last Day of Term (2011 Blue Door Press) is also set in school. However, more recently he has explored more personal topics in his fiction: Who Do You Love (Blue Door Press 2017) is about a middle-aged man reflecting upon a university romance, and Snow on the Danube (2019) is about a brother and sister torn apart by the Second World War. For the past few years, he has been working on writing short stories. He was delighted to read Miki Lentin’s powerful short fiction, which he feels shares many similarities with his own work in its depiction of tortured, emotional men. He really loved Miki’s story Efflorescence, and hopes other people enjoy his reading of it, as much as he liked recording it. His day job is as senior lecturer in education at Goldsmiths, but his heart truly remains in writing and reading fiction.  http://www.francisgilbert.co.uk http://www.bluedoorpress.co.uk This episode was produced by Tabitha Potts.