Short Story Writers: James Ferron Anderson

James was born in Northern Ireland, came to England to attend UEA in Norwich, and has been there ever since.

His short stories tend to remain set in the Northern Ireland of his past. One, The Bog Menagerie, won the Bryan MacMahon Short Story contest in 2006. He was an Escalator winner that same year.

James's first novel, I Still Miss Someone, dealing with growing up with terrorism, was set in both Northern Ireland and England in the 1980s. His second, almost completed, is To Stand and Be Still, set on the island of St Helena and the British troopship HMS Birkenhead off the coast of Southern Africa in 1852. The sinking of the Birkenhead put into the English language the expression ‘Women and children first’.

James says: "In the novels I have, without ever planning to, found myself writing about the rise and fall of the British Empire. Another consistent theme might be that the influences of the past, for both better and worse, are inescapable, resist them how we may."

Listen to James's story All The Whole Wide World

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