Pin Drop

Authors

Elizabeth Day is an award- winning author, journalist and co- founder of Pin Drop Studio. Day is the author of four novels and numerous short stories. Her critically acclaimed debut novel, Scissors Paper Stone, won a Betty Trask Award for a first novel written by an author under the age of thirty- five. Her second novel, Home Fires, was published in 2013, followed by Paradise City in 2015 and The Party in 2017, all to critical acclaim. Day is also a feature writer for UK and US publications including New York Magazine and Vogue, and is a contributing editor for Harper’s Bazaar. She won a British Press Award in 2004 for Young Journalist of the Year and in 2013 was Highly Commended in the category of Feature Writer of the Year. Day has appeared for Pin Drop on a number of occasions, including at the Simon Oldfield Gallery, Soho House, London, and at Pin Drop in Paris.

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Bethan Roberts won the inaugural Pin Drop Short Story Award in 2015 with Ms Featherstone and the Beast. Roberts is the author of four novels and numerous short stories. Her first novel, The Pools, was published in 2007 and won a Jerwood/Arvon Young Writers’ Award. Her second novel, The Good Plain Cook, published in 2008, was serialised on BBC Radio 4’s Book at Bedtime and featured in Time Out’s Books of the Year. My Policeman followed in 2012, and was chosen as that year’s City Read for Brighton. Her latest novel, Mother Island, is the recipient of a Jerwood Fiction Uncovered Prize. Roberts’ short fiction has been widely published and her dramas have been featured on BBC Radio 4.

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Nikesh Shukla is the author of three widely acclaimed novels and was the editor of the hugely successful collection of essays, The Good Immigrant. Shukla’s debut novel, Coconut Unlimited, was shortlisted for the Costa First Novel Award 2010 and longlisted for the Desmond Elliott Prize 2011. This was followed in 2014 by Meatspace, which was hailed by the Guardian as capturing ‘a cultural moment’ and in 2018 by The One Who Wrote Destiny. His short stories have been featured in Best British Short Stories 2013, the Sunday Times and BBC Radio 4. A key voice in the conversation around diversity in publishing, Shukla is a champion of emerging BAME writers. Shukla appeared for Pin Drop at the Simon Oldfield Gallery in 2013.

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Claire Fuller won the Pin Drop Short Story Award in 2016 for A Quiet Tidy Man.
Fuller’s short stories and flash fiction have received numerous awards, including the BBC Opening Lines competition in 2014.
Her novels Our Endless Numbered Days and Swimming Lessons have been released internationally to widespread critical acclaim, including the 2016 American Bookseller Association Awards (finalist) and 2015 Desmond Elliott Prize (winner).

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Ben Okri is the Man Booker Prize-winning author of eight novels, including The Famished Road and Starbook, as well as collections of poetry, short stories and essays. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and has been awarded an OBE as well as numerous international prizes, including the Man Booker Prize for The Famished Road, the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize for Africa, the Aga Khan Prize for Fiction and the Chianti Ruffino-Antico Fattore. He is a vice president of the English Centre of International PEN and was presented with a Crystal Award by the World Economic Forum. Okri has read for Pin Drop at the Bath Literature Festival and at the Royal Academy of Arts.

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Anne O’Brien was shortlisted for the Pin Drop Short Story Award in 2017 for These Silver Fish. O’Brien’s work has appeared in several anthologies and magazines and received recognition from numerous awards, including the Bath Short Story Award (winner), The London Magazine’s Short Story Competition (second prize) and shortlisted for the Bridport Prize and BBC’s Opening Lines.

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A. L. Kennedy is the author of seventeen books: six literary novels, one science- fiction novel, seven short- story collections and three works of non-fiction. She is also a dramatist for stage, radio, TV and film and regularly reads her work on the BBC.
She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and was twice included in the Granta Best of Young British Novelists list. She has won awards including the 2007 Costa Book Award and the Austrian State Prize for International Literature and was longlisted for the Man Booker Prize in 2016 for Serious Sweet. A longstanding supporter of Pin Drop, Kennedy has read her short stories for Pin Drop to audiences in London on several occasions and featured on RTE Radio.

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Anna Stewart was shortlisted for the Pin Drop Short Story Award 2017 for The Way I Breathed. Stewart’s stories have been widely published in journals and magazines, and shortlisted for a number of awards. With a background in theatre, Stewart has performed her work internationally and collaborated on development projects with the National Theatre of Scotland.

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Craig Burnett was shortlisted for the Pin Drop Short Story Award in 2017 for his story Feathers Thick with Oil.
Born in Dundee, Burnett grew up in Oxfordshire and lives in south London. His short stories have been included in various publications and he was a prize- winner at the Cambridge Short Story Award 2018. He is an editor at a global politics think tank.

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Douglas W. Milliken was shortlisted for the Pin Drop Short Story Award in 2017 for Heart’s Last Pass. Milliken is the American author of the novel To Sleep as Animals and several chapbooks, most recently One Thousand Owls Behind Your Chest. His stories have been widely published and have received numerous awards, including the Maine Literary Awards and the Pushcart Prize.

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Will Self is a highly acclaimed, award-winning British author, journalist and political commentator. He is the author of ten novels, five collections of shorter fiction, three novellas and five collections of non-fiction writing. His work has been translated into twenty-two languages, and his novel Umbrella was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize. Regularly appearing on television, Self is also a frequent contributor to BBC Radio 4 and writes for publications including the Guardian, Harpers, the New York Times and the London Review of Books. He also writes columns for the New Statesman, the Observer and The Times. Since 2012, Self has been Professor of Contemporary Thought at Brunel University. In 2015 he read for Pin Drop at the Royal Academy of Arts during Ai Weiwei’s landmark exhibition.

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Jarred McGinnis was shortlisted for the Pin Drop Short Story Award 2017 for Rough Beasts. His short fiction has been commissioned for BBC Radio 4 and appeared in respected journals in the UK, Canada, USA and Ireland. McGinnis has worked on projects selected for the British Council’s International Literature Showcase, teaches at Goldsmiths university and was the creative director for Moby Dick Unabridged at the Southbank Centre.

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Barney Walsh was shortlisted for the Pin Drop Short Story Award 2016 for Under the Waves. Walsh moved from a background in theoretical physics to literature and he is now the assistant editor of Litro Magazine. His stories have appeared in a number of respected journals in the UK.

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Rebecca F. John was shortlisted for the Pin Drop Short Story Award in 2017 for Paper Chains. John’s short stories have received widespread recognition, winning the PEN International New Voices Award, shortlisted for the Sunday Times EFG Short Story Award and broadcast on BBC Radio 4. Her debut novel, The Haunting of Henry Twist, was shortlisted for the Costa First Novel Award. In 2017, she was featured on the Hay Festival’s ‘Hay 30’ list.

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Joanna Campbell was shortlisted for the Pin Drop Short Story Award in 2017 for Brad’s Rooster Food. When Planets Slip Their Tracks, Campbell’s first collection of short fiction, was published in 2016 and followed her debut novel, Tying Down the Lion, published in 2015. Campbell’s short stories are widely published and have won numerous awards.

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Emily Bullock was shortlisted for the Pin Drop Short Story Award in 2017 for Freshwater. Winner of the Bristol Short Story Prize, Bullock’s short stories are widely acclaimed and have been broadcast on BBC Radio 4. Her debut novel, The Longest Fight, published in 2015, was featured in the Independent’s Paperbacks of the Year.

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Cherise Saywell was the winner of the Pin Drop Short Story Award 2017 for Morelia Spilota. Saywell is a British-Australian author of two critically acclaimed novels, Desert Fish (2011) and Twitcher (2013) (both Vintage). Her short stories have won the Mslexia Short Story Prize and the V. S. Pritchett Prize and been shortlisted for several awards, including the Bath Short Story Award and the Asham Award. Her story Pieces of Mars Have Fallen to Earth was selected for BBC Radio 4’s Opening Lines in 2015.

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Lionel Shriver is an award-winning and bestselling American author. Her novels include the National Book Award finalist So Much for That, the New York Times bestseller The Post-Birthday World, and the international bestseller We Need to Talk About Kevin, which won the Orange Prize in 2006 and was made into a film starring Tilda Swinton. Shriver won the BBC National Short Story Award for Kilifi Creek. She is also widely published as a journalist for the Guardian, New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Financial Times and many others. A longstanding supporter of Pin Drop, Shriver has read her short stories to captivated audiences at BAFTA and the Royal Academy of Arts during the Anselm Kiefer exhibition in 2015.

 

Artists

Eddie Peake (b. 1981, London) studied at the Slade School of Art and the Royal Academy Schools, where he graduated in 2013. Selected international exhibitions include Friendship of the Peoples, Simon Oldfield Gallery, London (2011), The Curve, Barbican, London (2015), Where You Belong, White Cube, Hong Kong (2016) and Concrete Pitch, White Cube Bermondsey, London (2018).

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Kay Harwood (b. 1978, Lancashire) studied in London at the Slade School of Art and the Royal Academy Schools, where she graduated in 2004. Since then, Harwood has exhibited widely in Britain and abroad, including Artfutures, at Bloomsberg Space, Simon Oldfield Gallery and the Royal Academy of Arts.

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Gabriella Boyd (b. 1988, Glasgow) studied at Glasgow School of Art and the Royal Academy Schools, where she graduated in 2017. Selected exhibitions include Dreamers Awake, White Cube Bermondsey, London (2017), Glasgow International (2018) and Help Yourself, Blain|Southern, London (2018). Boyd provided illustrations for the Folio Society’s publication of Freud’s Interpreting Dreams (2017).

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Jonathan Trayte (b. 1980, UK) graduated from the Royal Academy Schools in 2010. Selected exhibitions include Bloomberg New Contemporaries, ICA, London (2011), Art Icon, Under a Pine Tree, Simon Oldfield Gallery, London (2011) and Whitechapel Gallery, London (2017), and Tropicana, Christies, London (2017).

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Luey Graves (b. 1987, London) studied at the Slade School of Art and the Royal Academy Schools, where she graduated in 2012. Selected exhibitions include Friendship of the Peoples, Simon Oldfield Gallery, London (2011), Image/Object, Furini Contemporary, Rome (2013), Symbolic Logic, Identity Art Gallery, Hong Kong (2014) and Studio Voltaire, London (2015).

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Marco Palmieri (b. 1984, Tulsa) graduated from the Royal Academy Schools in 2011. Selected exhibitions include Bloomberg New Contemporaries, ICA, London (2011), Wonderwheel, Depart Foundation, Miami (2015), Three Romans, Galleria Lorcan O’Neill Roma, Rome (2015) and the British Schools, Rome.

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John Robertson (b. 1983, UK) studied at the Glasgow School of Art and the Royal Academy Schools, where he graduated in 2012. Selected exhibitions include Art Britannia, Miami (2013), Tilt, Royal Academy of Arts (2014) and Abbey Scholar in Painting at the British School in Rome.

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Coco Crampton (b. 1983, London) graduated from the Royal Academy Schools in 2014. Selected exhibitions include Fourth Drawer Down, Nottingham Contemporary, Nottingham (2014) and All Over, Studio Leigh, London (2016).

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Fani Parali (b. 1983, Greece) graduated from the Royal Academy Schools in 2017. Selected exhibitions include Gender, Identity and Material, Royal Academy of Arts, London (2017), Drawing Biennial, Drawing Room, London (2017) and Glasgow International (2018).

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Murray O’Grady (b. 1987, Essex) graduated from the Royal Academy Schools in 2014. Selected exhibitions include Bloomberg New Contemporaries, ICA, London (2010) and Young British Art (2011/13). Murray was awarded the inaugural Vanguard Prize (2010) and was Artist in Residence at Burlington Arcade as part of the Royal Academy Arts Festival (2017).

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Pio Abad (b. 1983, Manila) studied at the University of the Philippines, Glasgow School of Art and the Royal Academy Schools, where he graduated in 2012. Selected international exhibitions include e-flux, New York (2015), Centre for Contemporary Arts, Glasgow (2016) and Art Basel Encounters, Art Basel, Hong Kong (2017).

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Declan Jenkins (b. 1984, Isle of Wight) studied at New College Oxford and Wimbledon College of Art before graduating from the Royal Academy Schools in 2015. He presented his first solo exhibition, I Sing of Armoires…, Sims Reed Gallery, London (2017).

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Mary Ramsden (b. 1984, North Yorkshire) graduated from the Royal Academy Schools in 2013. Ramsden has exhibited widely, including New Order II: British Art Today, Saatchi Gallery London (2014), Art Now: Vanilla and Concrete, TATE Britain, London (2015) and Couples Therapy, Pilar Corrias, London (2017).

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Carla Busuttil (b. 1982, Johannesburg) graduated from the Royal Academy Schools in 2008. Selected international exhibitions include Newspeak: British Art Now, Saatchi Gallery, London (2010), We See (in) the Dark, Museum of African Design, Johannesburg, South Africa (2015), Art Los Angeles Contemporary, Los Angeles (2015) and a Fashion Art Commission at 180 Strand, London (2018).

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Jessy Jetpacks (b. 1987, Dubai) graduated from the Royal Academy Schools in 2017. Selected exhibitions include Royal Academy America (2016), The Second Space, Xi’an Maike Centre, China (2017/18) and Glasgow International (2018).

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Nick Goss (b. 1981, Bristol) graduated from the Royal Academy Schools in 2009 and has exhibited widely. Selected exhibitions include Jerwood Contemporary Painters, Jerwood Space, London and national tour (2010), Bluing, Simon Preston Gallery, New York (2016).

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Tim Ellis (b. 1981, Chester) graduated from the Royal Academy Schools in 2009. Selected exhibitions include Newspeak: British Art Now Part I, Saatchi Gallery, London (2010), Seduction, Simon Oldfield Gallery, London (2012), We Belong Together, Hong Kong (2013) and The London Open, Whitechapel Gallery, London (2015).

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Adam Shield (b. 1988, Newcastle-upon-Tyne) studied at Newcastle University and the Royal Academy Schools, where he graduated in 2017. Selected exhibitions include Bearing Liability, Strange Cargo Gallery, Folkestone (2017) and Glasgow International (2018).