I shouldn’t break character but my creator has won the 2020 Sandstone Press short fiction prize for his story ‘An Epidemic of Kindness [redacted]’. Sandstone Press judge DanBrotzel described the piece as ‘dystopian’ and ‘sinister’.
The Sandstone Press citation states: “In this dystopian satire – a partially redacted dispatch from a carer on the frontline of a world with many unnerving echoes of our own – the epidemic has become an enduring fixture of life, the elderly are subject to news censorship and coercive caring, and the phrase ‘Kindness Services’ has a very sinister meaning.”
Based in Inverness, Sandstone Press books have won and been shortlisted for literary prizes including the Man Booker International, Man Booker, Commonwealth, Arthur C Clarke, Creative Scotland, Green Carnation and Saltire Society.