GALLEY BEGGAR PRESS SHORT STORY PRIZE 2025/26
Ten questions with GBP Short Story Prize author Alan Gray
HELLO ALAN, AND CONGRATULATIONS ON YOUR LONGLISTING FOR THE GALLEY BEGGAR PRESS SHORT STORY PRIZE. CAN YOU GIVE OUR READERS A TWO OR THREE SENTENCE INTRODUCTION TO ‘EXTENDED PLAY’, AND WHAT YOUR STORY IS ABOUT?
My story’s about a metalhead who’s grown old but remains devoted to that music and culture. He lives for metal, but that level of obsession has isolated him and made connection with others difficult. Music is what keeps him going, really. But it is the sort of music that makes an art out of self-destruction.
PLEASE TELL US MORE ABOUT THE INSPIRATION FOR ‘EXTENDED PLAY’ TOO: HOW AND WHEN DID IT COME TO YOU, AND HOW DID YOU SET ABOUT WRITING IT?
There’s a bar in Newcastle called Trillions. In my early twenties I used to go there with some friends from the nearby college and I thought it was the coolest thing ever. I wondered what it would be like if I’d continued going, and if I fully took on board the music’s message.
The appeal of that sort of art, I think, is, in part, the promise of danger. It claims to tell you that you’re right about being alone, right about everything being shit, and the solution offered is the art itself. I’m sympathetic to that, at least to some extent, but I also think it can lead you down a miserable path.
ONE OF THE FASCINATING – AND PAINFUL – THINGS ABOUT ‘EXTENDED PLAY’ IS THE WAY THAT THE PROTAGONIST IS PART OF A DISTINCTIVE MUSICAL COMMUNITY, ONE WHICH INVOLVES A VISIBLE AND HEAVILY CODED MEMBERSHIP – AND YET HE IS ALSO UTTERLY ALONE. (AND FEELS IT.) WOULD YOU SAY THIS IS CORRECT – AND IF SO, CAN YOU SAY MORE ABOUT IT?
Yes, I think the music is premised on the feeling of isolation — it is a response to that feeling and encourages it. You belong to the extent that you don’t belong in the broader culture at large, and that can be immensely rewarding and also self-defeating. I think the aesthetic makes a sort of spirituality out of loneliness and exclusion. The circle of ‘belonging’ just keeps on getting smaller and smaller — that’s just the phoney metal, that’s just the money-making metal, etc, etc. It offers a chance to tell everybody to fuck off … but in the end, well, you’ve told everybody to fuck off.
'extended play' ALSO ACTS AS SOMETHING AS A TRIBUTE TO METAL AS A GENRE – WHICH HAS LED ME TO THE ASSUMPTION THAT YOU’RE A SEASONED METAL FAN. AM I RIGHT?
Growing up, I was obsessed with industrial metal, prog rock, the lot. I no longer listen to it, except for the odd burst of nostalgia, but I still feel those emotions from time to time, and strangely miss being immersed in them. I do think that metal was a kind of coming-to-consciousness for me. I grew up in a pit village in County Durham, and it did help me deal with the feeling of not fitting in and gave me the courage to do my own thing. It made me unafraid of being left out or bullied because my heroes were people who got left out or bullied. There’s a strength in that, but, as I say, there are also side effects.
HOW LONG HAVE YOU BEEN WRITING?
I’m a relatively late-comer to fiction, and I didn't really start reading it until towards the end of my undergraduate degree, which was in psychology. It’s hard to say how long I’ve been writing. There were on-and-off periods – periods where I talked about doing it more than actually doing it etc. All the usual, I suspect. And then when I did commit, there was always work and everything else.
Anyway, I’m gonna say ‘a while,’ because it’s not easy and you do have to spend a lot of time on it. I hate it when people act like it just comes naturally. Maybe it’s ‘natural’ because of other social factors ...
DO YOU HAVE A DAILY ROUTINE?
At the moment I’m studying for my MA in Prose Fiction at UEA thanks to the Sonny and Gita Mehta UK Scholarship. But for years, I’d just try and find whatever time I could to commit to writing. I am usually very strict with myself, though. I try to create a rhythm and I do structure my days — usually around coffee breaks or walking the dog. I don’t think you should force yourself, but showing up is key, and making that showing up a pleasure is how you create a sustainable practice. I work on multiple things at once, switch between projects, and encourage myself to experiment and play as much as possible. I rarely sit at the desk knowing what I’m going to do, and when that does happen, I’m skeptical of just going through the motions.
AND ARE YOU WORKING ON SOMETHING AT THE MOMENT?
I’m working on a short story collection about working-class life in the North East and broader England. Working class lives are seriously underrepresented in English fiction, and class, although a major factor in multiple ‘Quality of Life’ outcomes, is not a protected characteristic. As a nation, we’re simultaneously obsessed with class and extremely dismissive of it. Some are deluded enough to think it no longer exists, others ignorantly suggest it’s something you grow out of. I want to show that there are many different ways of being working class, and combat the countless prejudices associated with it.
WHAT’S THE BEST WRITING TIP YOU’VE EVER RECEIVED – AND THE WORST ONE?
The best:
It’s gonna sound cheesy, but I think the hardest thing to do is to not hide in the language of others and to be proud of who you are and how you speak. It’s really not easy to do on the page, because we all have a ‘writing voice’ that’s usually what we’ve been told to think of as ‘good writing’ — but most ‘good writing’ is heavily classed, and it’s like when somebody says ‘she’s well spoken’: it usually means ‘she speaks with an RP accent.’ It’s advice about being yourself, basically. But somebody framed it once in a different way and it really hit home.
The worst:
Probably something like what you see in the various handbooks about dialect writing. Usually it’s just prejudice transcribed as an ‘artistic rule’. E.g Don’t use too many dialect words. Make sure your use of dialect is consistent throughout the piece etc. This sort of stuff is just nonsense. Too much for whom? Consistent to whom? It assumes a reader who doesn’t speak the dialect. But what about readers who do? Would it strike them as ‘too much’? It’s as if such instructors can’t understand that dialect isn’t a gimmick, it’s a language.
WHAT ABOUT OTHER WRITERS? CAN YOU TELL US ABOUT SOME AUTHORS YOU ADMIRE, AS WELL AS SOME THAT YOU ARE INFLUENCED BY?
I was recently blown away by Tony Tulathmimute’s short story collection ‘Rejection’. It feels very alive, and it’s writing that really exists on its own terms. Danielle Evans also took over my mind a lot of last year – her two collections are seriously good. I read her story ‘Virgins,’ and bought them both immediately. ‘Boys go to Jupiter’ is another major stand-out piece.
For representations of working class life in the United Kingdom, James Kelman is hard to beat. ‘In with the Doctor’ is pure genius.
I’ll list a few other writers, so I don’t end up going on forever: Lucy Caldwell. Collin Barrett. Jan Carson. Agnes Owens. Peter Stamm, Judith Hermann, Vincenzo Latronico, Andrzej Tichý ...
Anybody who thinks the short story is dead is crazy.
THE HORROR OF THE BLANK PAGE.” DO YOU FEEL THAT HORROR? AND HOW WOULD YOU ADVISE OTHER WRITERS TO GET BEYOND IT?
I think the horror of the blank page comes from a belief that you must have some sort of blueprint ready, and art is the product of fleshing it out. In my experience, the idea is usually something that comes from the writing itself. I’d say don’t necessarily wait for an idea, just write. You’ll write a lot of junk but just keep writing and eventually you’ll hit upon something that interests you. It’s like therapy — you talk and talk about all this rubbish and then suddenly there’s an insight and you’re ready to stay with it.
ALAN GRAY is a writer and chartered social psychologist. He is currently studying the Prose Fiction MA at UEA, where he was awarded the inaugural Sonny and Gita Mehta Scholarship. His stories have appeared (or are forthcoming) in various print publications and online journals, including Litro, Stand, Lighthouse, and The Fiction Desk. He is a City Writes Competition winner, a Stinging Fly Summer School bursary scholar, and a London Writers’ Centre Developing Tutor. He is from Horden, County Durham, North East England, and lives in London.