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...

A group of mourners attend a funeral and a wake for a shopkeeper and we learn more about his past and relationships. This short story was written and read by Joan Treacy. Joan Treacy has been writing for about five years. She has written many short stories and several of them have been published in Irish magazines. She is a member of Leixlip library writing group and they have helped and encouraged her writing. She is also the author of a horror novel, Orchard House....

This month Martin Nathan interviews Lindsay Gillespie who was a finalist in the Costa Short Story prize this year with her story Pholas Dactylus. The Costa prize involves them recording the three stories and then a public vote. You can also listen to one of the stories she wrote for Story Radio two years ago, A Summoning Spell, read by Saskia Butler. If you would like to read her prize-winning story you can download Pholas Dactylus here. Warning: A Summoning Spell contains some adult...

A clerk goes to a funeral and meets a mysterious young woman in this short story set on the famous Victorian 'Ghost Train'. This story was written and produced by Tabitha Potts. The story was read by Nigel Fyfe. Nigel Fyfe is an actor and voiceover artist. Alongside stage and screen work, he has recorded audio drama with Wireless Theatre and Ragged Foils, and a number of audiobooks. The photograph used to illustrate this podcast is by John Cunliffe of Scope Enterprise and is from the...

A young female writer is commissioned to write a post about a lethal rat trap for a content mill. This story was written by Rebecca Lee. She lives in Charlottesville, Virginia. Her current project “selfie” is a series of medical poems. Her body of work can be found in The British Medical Journal, CHEST physicians, Dartmouth’s Life Lines and Harvard’s medical school journal, Third Space. The story was read by Jessica Nettles. Jessica is a voice-over artist and a writer. Her influences...

The scene is a retrospective exhibition of the work of a famous male artist. As the young female curator is interviewed by a journalist, we start to suspect there is more to his paintings than meets the eye. Marie O’Shea is a short story writer living on the Beara Peninsula. Her work has appeared in, ‘Popshot’, ‘The Galway Review’, ‘The Blue Nib’, ‘The Caterpillar Magazine,’ ‘Literary Mama’ and ‘Storgy’. Catherine Allison is a voice artist and actor living in SE London. She trained as...

An Irish farmer, Liam Og, decides to leave his farm to his unknown American nephew. This short story was written and read by Steve Wade. Steve Wade’s short story collection, ‘In Fields of Butterfly flames’, was published in October 2020 by Bridge House Publishing. His fiction has been published and anthologised in over fifty print publications. His short stories have won, been placed and shortlisted in numerous writing competitions. Winner of the Short Story category in the Write By the...

SALVAGE is set in Tide Mills, an abandoned village near Newhaven on the Sussex coast. The traces of the mill and the childrens’ home can still be seen on the shingle beach. Content warning: this drama contains some material listeners might find distressing The piece was directed by Luke Blackwood-Stevenson Cast: JANE - Rubie Ozanne BILL - Lewis Jenkins SAM - Kieran Dooner IAN - Hamish Brewster FRED - Luke Blackwood-Stevenson Recording engineer: Max Jukes Script, music...

Livingstone Franklin, a hospital cleaner, has a side hustle as a soul singer - and a crush on a beautiful colleague. This story is written by Lindsay Gillespie, a Lewes-based writer. It is read by Luke Blackwood-Stevenson. The producer is Martin Nathan. Martin Nathan has worked as a labourer, showman, pancake chef, fire technician, and railway engineer. His short fiction has been published by Tangent Press, HCE and Grist and his poetry has appeared in Finished Creatures, Erbacce and...

In this month's short story, rebellious Maddy's reunion with her much older and more conventional sister goes disastrously wrong. About the writer Belgium based writer Sheila Kinsella’s short stories draw inspiration from her Irish upbringing. An avid watcher of people’s behaviour, and blessed with abundant natural curiosity, Sheila lures the reader into a shrewdly observed world via imagery.  Sheila graduated with an MA in Creative Writing (Distance Learning) from Lancaster University...

A young woman leaves Jamaica for the UK, hoping to emulate her cousin Jacqueline by working as a nurse. When she arrives, nothing is quite as she expected it to be. Jacqueline was written by Tatum Anderson. She is a journalist and writer from London. She received an MA In Creative Writing at Birkbeck, University of London and is now working on a PhD there in the autumn. She has recently completed her first novel about Jamaican soldiers in the First World War which was Highly Commended in...

A young woman travels from her old life to her new, from the North to the South, on a Greyhound bus. Content warning: this story mentions rape. A Whittenberg is a Philadelphia native who has a global perspective. If she wasn’t an author she’d be a private detective or a jazz singer. She loves reading about history and true crime. Her novels include Sweet Thang, Hollywood and Maine, Life is Fine, Tutored and The Sane Asylum. This short story was read by Antonia White. The producer was...

We have two shorter stories this month, Knish by Martin Nathan and The Prison Poem by Rebecca Ruth Gould. Knish by Martin Nathan The knish is a lump of potato with pastry wrapped around it and baked. You can still buy them in Brighton Beach, Long Island, filled with kasha or beef or cherry and cream cheese or pretty much anything you want. Like this story, it’s not what’s on the outside or on the inside that counts. It’s somewhere between the two that makes things...

A party, a prank, and a dear friend passed away: "The Friends" by Maggie Nerz Iribarne celebrates and mourns a friendship through awkward laughter and silent tears.  Maggie Nerz Iribarne is a lifelong writer of journals, poetry, fiction, creative nonfiction, memoir, and essays. She is happiest with a blank journal and a new pen in hand. A lucky and grateful woman in all ways, she gets to work as a writing tutor at Le Moyne College and practices her craft on the third-floor attic of her home...

Two friends shoot some pool on a Saturday night in Dublin. There's not much else to do. But what happens when one friend wants something different from the night out? The Bowl was published on Storgy and is reproduced with their permission. This podcast contains some adult language. About Miki Lentin Miki took up writing while travelling the world with his family a few years ago, and this year was a finalist in the 2020 Irish Writer’s Centre Novel Fair. As well as writing his first...

Four men, friends since childhood, walk into a wood, where they find a pile of bones. This strange discovery will change their lives forever. RD Mouton is an American Writer and Freelancer. He is currently pursuing a career in writing and completing his current projects, a short story collection and a young adult novel. He can be found on Twitter as @RDMakes. Photo by Koan courtesy of Morguefile.com Sound effect used are adapted from woodsbirds.wav by Sparrer on Freesound.org under the...

The narrator is a health care aide who cares for a disabled woman (Betty) as best as possible and tends to her many hamsters, including Brutus, with the ultimate compassion. It seems that Betty’s real confidant and friend is not the hamster she obsesses over in the story, but the young man who cleans out the hamster cages, cooks her meals, and buries her once-beloved rodents in the backyard. This story originally appeared in Fleas on the Dog Online in 2020.  Mark Tulin is a poet, short...

Esteban, finder of lost things, awakes in his grave on November second to return home to his family for Dia De Los Muertos. But he overstays his allotted night and cannot find his way back. Time is running out, for if he stays out too long, he will be forgotten and fade away into nothingness.  This story originally appeared in Cosmic Roots and Eldritch Shores in 2018. E.E. King is a painter, performer, writer, and biologist - She’ll do anything that won’t pay the bills, especially if it...

The Edge is part of a series of location-based pieces exploring the stories and power of landscape. They use GPS location to trigger various sections when you run the app in the link supplied and you are in the correct location.  This piece runs from Birling Gap to Beachy head and explores some of the stories associated with the area. It works either as a clifftop walk or a walk at beach level (although you need to walk on a falling tide). Despite its beauty Beachy Head has long had...

A Chicken that Shares our Values looks at the bipolar experience, how a simple phrase or marketing slogan can plunge us into the super-charged, symbolic world. As meaning-machines how and when do we let go? Daniel’s stories have appeared in Esquire, Ambit, The London Magazine, Litro and The Lampeter Review. He is in the third years of a PhD in the weird and eerie and completing a novel Highly Strung Read more on his blog Conan the...

In this short story, two city-dwellers move to a remote house in the countryside and are unsettled by their experiences in their new home. Written, produced and read by Tabitha Potts Tabitha Potts is a writer living in East London. She has had several short stories published in print and online and been short-listed and long-listed for various awards, most recently the Sunderland University Short Story Award. In a past life, she was a BBC Radio Drama producer. Read more...

In 'BFFs' by Marianne Rogoff, a woman in mid-life contemplates whether or not she's ready for any new relationships while on a road trip. MARIANNE ROGOFF is the author of the Pushcart-nominated story collection Love Is Blind in One Eye, the memoir Silvie’s Life, and numerous travel stories, short fictions, essays, and book reviews. BFFs was a Finalist for the Ernest Hemingway Flash Fiction Prize 2018 and “Featured Fiction” in Fiction Southeast on 02/05/2020. BFFs short story and...

We have two shorter pieces exploring grief and loss as part of the Waterloo Festival. “Final Unveil” is written and read by Saskia Butler, a writer and performer who lives in Lewes, Sussex.  “A Summoning Spell” is written by Lindsay Gillespie, a Lewes-based writer and read by Saskia Butler.   Note: these stories deal with trauma events. There is some adult language used so this episode is not suitable for under 18s.

Tatum Anderson is a journalist and writer from London and The Invisibles tells of her time as an inpatient at St Thomas's Hospital. She has just received an MA In Creative Writing at Birkbeck, University of London and will begin a PhD there in the autumn. She has recently completed her first novel, Bad Material, about Jamaican soldiers in the First World War and is writing her second, Mengo Baby. The story was read by actor Miranda Harrison. You can find out more about her work on her...

Persepolis by Miki Lentin tells the story of a meeting between a volunteer Tony and a refugee Ali at a refugee support centre in Waterloo. Under a backdrop of a production of 'End Game' that is playing in the Old Vic Theatre, the story looks at both characters, and asks what it is they are both trying to escape from. Written and produced as part of the Waterloo Festival. About the author/producer Miki took up writing while travelling the world with his family a few years ago. Last year...