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Ashley Margolis reads Ghost Kitchen by Ross Raisin, which is the fifth story shortlisted for this year's Â鶹¹ÙÍøÊ×Ò³Èë¿Ú National Short Story Award with Cambridge University. Here we are taken into the underbelly of the gig economy in an unnamed city.

Ross Raisin is the author of four novels: A Hunger, A Natural, Waterline and God’s Own Country (2008). He won the Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year award in 2009, and in 2013 was named on Granta’s once a decade Best of Young British Novelists list. He has written short stories for various publications, including Granta, Prospect, the Sunday Times, Esquire, Â鶹¹ÙÍøÊ×Ò³Èë¿Ú Radio 3 and 4.

The Â鶹¹ÙÍøÊ×Ò³Èë¿Ú National Short Story Award is one of the most prestigious for a single short story, with the winning author receiving £15,000, and four further shortlisted authors £600 each. The 2023 winner of the Â鶹¹ÙÍøÊ×Ò³Èë¿Ú National Short Story Award was Naomi Wood who won for ‘Comorbidities’, a story examining the difficulty of maintaining love and intimacy in a marriage, from her debut collection, This is Why We Can’t Have Nice Things (Orion). The 2024 winner will be announced live on Â鶹¹ÙÍøÊ×Ò³Èë¿Ú Radio 4’s Front Row on Tuesday 1 October 2024.

All of the stories are available on Â鶹¹ÙÍøÊ×Ò³Èë¿Ú Sounds where you can also download the Â鶹¹ÙÍøÊ×Ò³Èë¿Ú National Short Story Award podcast which includes a Front Row interview with each of the five shortlisted writers.

Abridged by Rowan Routh
Produced by Elizabeth Allard