Closure: Contemporary Black British Short StoriesPaperback, 1 August 2015

The standout feature of Closure is its richness - of styles, forms, themes, and ways of telling that display a keen awareness of the contemporary short story while exploiting the suppleness of the form to serve the imaginative needs of the writer. The richness is also in the tremendous array of moods and levels of intensity of these stories. Raw realism gives way to pure lyricism; the fanciful rubs shoulders with the speculative.

There is trauma and humour; tenderness and transgression. These narratives are about our humanity: the ways in which we do and do not love, unrequited yearnings, the quiet unstated violence in our lives, the way we obscure loneliness, and of course the precious moments of jubilation.

Jacob Ross has Judged the Scott Moncrieff Translation, the VS Pritchett and Tom Gallon prizes. He co-edited Voice, Memory, Ashes; Riding and Rising, and Turf and co-authored with Kwesi Owusu, Behind the Masquerade: The Story of Notting Hill Carnival. He is also the author of two short story collections, Song for Simone, and A Way to Catch the Dust.