Dr Ailsa Cox

Ailsa Cox is a fiction writer and critic, with a special interest in the short story genre. Her own stories have been included in various magazines and anthologies, e.g.The Virago Book of Love and Loss (ed. Hammick, Virago, 1992); Stand One (ed. Blackburn, Silkin and Tracey, Gollancz 1984); No Limits (Crocus, 1994); Critical Quarterly, Panurge, Writing Women, Sunk Island Review, Metropolitan, London Magazine (April/May 2001), Manchester Stories 3 (Comma Press), Transmission 9 (Sept. 2007), Katherine Mansfield Studies Vol.2, Malcolm Lowry: From the Mersey to the World (ed. Biggs and Tookey, Liverpool University Press, 2009), New Writing: The International Journal for the Practice and Theory of Creative Writing Vol. 2:7 and Paraxis 3 (2012).

She has also been shortlisted for prizes including the Stand International Short Story competition, the V.S. Pritchett award and the Bridport prize. The Real Louise and Other Stories is published by Headland Press. Read Ailsa Cox’s stories online:

• ‘No Problemo’ at east of the web
• Doors of Tunis’ in Rainy City Stories
• ‘Renaissance Man’ in http://www.paraxis.org/pages/p03/renaissanceman.html

On the BA Hons Creative Writing she currently teaches fiction and workshop modules. She is also a tutor in the MA in Creative Writing and supervises PhD students. She is willing to discuss research proposals, whether entirely critical or practice-led, on any aspect of the short story.

Ailsa Cox gained a distinction in her MA in Creative Writing at Lancaster University, where she also completed her BA in English. Her doctorate was awarded at Loughborough University in 1999; her thesis, Time and Subjectivity in Contemporary Short Fiction, applies Bakhtinian, Bergsonian and Kristevan theory to readings of stories by Alice Munro, Grace Paley and Katherine Mansfield, with an additional practice-based element. Her theoretical research has continued to explore the relationship between the short story and temporality. She has given papers at international conferences including the Oslo Seminar in Short Fiction (2003); the Society for the Study of the Short Story 8th and 9th international conferences, at Lisbon in 2006 and Cork in 2008; the Malcolm Lowry Centenary Conference at the University of British Columbia in 2009; and conferences on ‘Theatricality in the Short Story’ (2007) and ‘The Image in the Short Story (2010) at the University of Angers. She co-organized the conference, ‘The Figure of the Author in the Short Story in English’ which took place at the University of Angers in 2011, and also organized a series of one day conferences on the short story at Edge Hill University.

Ailsa Cox is the editor of the peer-reviewed journal, Short Fiction in Theory and Practice http://www.intellectbooks.co.uk/journals/view-Journal,id=196/. She is also a member of the editorial board of The Journal of the Short Story in English: presentation and a member of the Katherine Mansfield Society. She co-ordinates the Edge Hill Prize for the Short Story awarded annually to the author of a published short story collection. She also co-ordinates Edge Hill’s Narrative Research Group. Current projects include a novel, The Institute, and research on writers including Helen Simpson, Alice Munro and Malcolm Lowry.