Longlisted for the 2022 Edge Hill Prize.

‘The mapmakers work late in the closed room, conjuring from ink and skin new worlds neither will ever see.’

The Map Waits explores those moments when what will happen as we move forward remains unknown and uncharted. A besieged zookeeper awaits his fate; a magician’s assistant performs her own vanishing act; a photographer refuses the shot of a lifetime: these rich miniatures capture turning points deep in the heart. Characters realise a secret or deny a truth. Some overturn imposed stories of how they should live; others refuse to acknowledge a choice they have made. New lives are welcomed, losses are mourned. Long-buried memories erupt, new journeys begin.

Where will these stories take you?

Praise for The Map Waits

The Map Waits by Sharon Telfer is simply a stunning collection. This is a writer who knows her people, knows their struggles and heartaches, the dreams they hold dear. There's generational pain in these stories. There's loss, too, and the ravages of war, but also an abundance of grit and courage and joy. Telfer's prose is rich and precise, evocative and lyrical. A profoundly moving, incandescent debut from a truly gifted writer.
—Kathy Fish, Wild Life: Collected Works

Sharon Telfer has been one of my favourite flash fiction writers for a number of years, so I’ve been eagerly anticipating her debut collection. It has been well worth the wait; The Map Waits didn’t just exceed my expectations, it blew them away.

With just a few brushstrokes, Sharon creates world after world after world that pull you in and makes you want to slow ... down ... to ... absorb. absolutely. everything. She’s an artist who paints with nuance, perfectly balancing what’s on the page with what’s implied.

There are no weak links in this collection that builds to more than the sum of its parts. Sharon’s writing is sharp, scrupulous and striking. There is magic between these lines, and poetry inside them.
—Ingrid Jendrzejewski, Co-Director, National Flash Fiction Day (UK)

The Map Waits, Sharon Telfer’s debut collection of contemporary and historical short fictions, is poignant and profound. As well as working as compelling whole pieces, her stories are brilliantly composed at the sentence level — she has such an exact command of language and rhythm. The stories illustrate everything that is best about short form prose and have much to say about all aspects of humanity past and present. Highly recommended.
—Jude Higgins, The Chemist’s House

The Map Waits is full of wonder and wisdom; the stories are lush, deep, and crafted, and Sharon Telfer manages to bring sincerity and sensitivity to every line she writes. A truly beautiful collection.
—Nuala O’Connor, Birdie

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Longlisted for the 2022 Edge Hill Prize.

Human Terrain. The Army acknowledges, through the lessons of Afghanistan and Iraq, that human geography is as important as any satellite map.

Human Terrain deals with female voices and working-class existences, ordinary lives transformed by loss and love. There’s the mother working as cutman for her daughter in the boxing ring; the family who find themselves abandoned at the seaside; the gardener digging for love among the grass cuttings and weeds. Characters standing in a classroom, drinking in a pub, working the fryer in a fish and chip shop, or finding love in an ice warehouse, they all inhabit the collection. Stories full of dark humour and deep tenderness that depict the characters’ struggles to understand their place in the world.

Praise for Human Terrain

In Emily Bullock’s mystical collection, loss is evident. Life, thwarted dreams, family and its bonding and breaking, addictions, sins, despair.

These are stories told through beautiful, emotional writing that veers between the mystical and the ordinary, the lyrical and the raw, the profane and the infinite.

This is definitely one of the finest collections of the year and I can’t wait to explore Emily Bullock’s work.
—Amalia Gkavea, The Opinionated Reader

Here is a writer who has harnessed, embraced and extended the human spirit in multitude ways, harnessing each story's energy and going where it might take her.

Diversity and adversity run through this collection like welcome silver threads. We witness self destruction and self awareness in equal measure, but we are invited to view them through a three dimensional, empathetic lens.

This is a sparkling collection with humanity at it’s heart. Beautifully balanced and constructed, it is a perfect short story collection.
—Bookbound

Praise for Emily Bullock

Startlingly original and poetic – Bullock combines horror and brutality with unexpected moments of tenderness.
—The Observer, on Inside the Beautiful Inside

The backdrop of postwar London is splendidly done - all crusted soot and swirling fog - and the boxing scenes have a terrific vigour and excitement.
—The Times, on The Longest Fight

Emily Bullock’s debut, The Longest Fight, [is] a fine addition to the canon of boxing literature… And Bullock too, is alert to boxing’s nobility, as well as its barbarity, in this grittily impressive first novel.
—Independent on Sunday, on The Longest Fight

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