I’m Professor Emerita in Short Fiction at Edge Hill. and the founder of the Edge Hill Prize. My own fiction has been widely published in magazines and anthologies, including Best British Short Stories, the London Magazine and Litro. Cocky Watchman was published as a limited edition chapbook by Nightjar Press. A mini-collection, in collaboration with the artist Patricia Farrell, is forthcoming from Confingo Press. Other books include Writing Short Stories (Routledge 2005, 2016, 3rd edition forthcoming) and Alice Munro (Northcote House 2003). My most recent critical work is Reading Alice Munro’s Breakthrough Books, in collaboration with Tim Struthers, Corinne Bigot and Catherine Sheldrick Ross (EUP 2024). I’ve also published essays on other writers including Katherine Mansfield, Helen Simpson, Daisy Johnson and Jon McGregor. Current  projects include What Might Have Been, a hybrid fiction/memoir based on the aftermath of the shooting of a young policeman in Wolverhampton in 1925.  Born in Walsall, West Midlands, I now live in Todmorden on the border between Lancashire and Yorskshire.