I spent a good chunk of my evenings and weekends during 2023 with one thing in my mind: producing an anthology to celebrate 40 years of Tindal Street Fiction Group.

I’ve been a member of the prestigious Birmingham-based group since 2018. It’s not just any writing group, though – it’s truly extraordinary. Begun in 1983, it gave birth to regional publishing powerhouse Tindal Street Press in the 1990s, and is made up of accomplished writers.

The Group’s members include Booker and Orange prize listed authors, best-sellers, winners of several awards including the Tom-Gallon award, the Shirley Jackson award and the Prix du Premier Roman Etranger, and their work appears in several Best British Short Stories anthologies.

For the 20th and 30th anniversaries, current and former Group members were invited to contribute to anthologies (‘Going the Distance’, 2003; ‘The Sea in Birmingham’, 2013) – they were greatest hits style compilations.

This time round we still wanted to produce an anthology but decided to showcase the group as it stands now. All current full members were invited to submit self-selected and self-edited pieces (either stories or novel extracts) for publication.

The only criterion was a 5,000 word limit and the submitted pieces were workshopped by the group. The texts truly highlight the work of Group members and give a snapshot of the group in action.

As well as submitting my story ‘The Sea’ for publication in the anthology, I took on the challenge of assembling the book using Ingram Spark’s book builder tool. How hard can it be I thought? Well, pretty straightforward. Yes, there were some false starts, and there are things I wished I’d done differently, but after managing the layout and cover design, I’m really happy with what we produced.

As we say in the book blurb, it’s “an exciting new anthology Thursday Nights celebrates 40 years of Tindal Street Fiction Group, with a collection of short fiction from members of the group today.

“The Group meets fortnightly in Birmingham on Thursday evening, inspiring the book’s title, and the 14 stories and novel extracts in this collection are the work of current members, all local writers with eyes on the world. The stories in the collection travel from Birmingham to India, via San Francisco and Italy, stretching from the 19th century to the modern day.”

Alan Mahar, Tindal Street Fiction Group founder and former Publishing Director of Tindal Street Press, said: “I was there at the beginning, I started it off… Some went on to make a dent in the world of publishing: Julia Bell, Joel Lane, Kit de Waal, Annie Murray, Amanda Smyth, Luke Brown… Gaynor Arnold still reads and writes for us, Alan Beard and Mick Scully too. There are 14 strong stories in this anthology… they shine.”

We managed to get some great testimonials for Thursday Nights.

‘A wonderful collection… told with warmth and verve from some of the best Birmingham writers. I loved it.’ Kit de Waal, author of My Name is Leon and Without Warning and Only Sometimes

‘This collection is gold. Pure gold.’ Amanda Smyth, author of Black Rock, A Kind of Eden and Fortune.

‘Full of heart and voice and the concerns of the contemporary moment.’ Julia Bell, author of Dirty Work

‘A really excellent anthology.’ Annie Murray, author of Chocolate Girls, Birmingham Friends and more

We had a successful launch event at Voce Books in Digbeth, Birmingham, with brilliant readings and a fantastic crowd.

And since publication, Alan Beard’s story from the collection was chosen for inclusion in the annual Best British Short Stories compiliation, published by Salt publishing.

Also in the months after publication, I entered a short story Deepwater in the Bridport Prize competition and received an email saying: ‘We really enjoyed reading your work. In fact we liked it so much you were selected to go forward to the competition’s second round. This means your writing is in the top 7% of short story entrants.’ That’s as far as it went, but was still one of the highlights of my writing year, and a shot in the arm.

The Thursday Nights anthology is available at Waterstones,  Blackwell’s, and Amazon.