Permanent Emotion is a captivating anthology which highlights the exceptional writing talent currently emerging from the North of England. Edited by SJ Bradley and supported by the Walter Swan Trust, it features graduates of the Northern Short Story Festival Academy programme, which has played a crucial role in nurturing the unique voices of writers based in the North since 2017.

No two of these stories are the same: they range from playful, experimental narratives to folk horror, fantasy and reimagined fairy tales. Writers who received remote mentoring during the pandemic have captured the surreal, transformative nature of those times; others have contemplated the body-altering horrors of motherhood, or the freedom and wildness of nature. Together, their stories offer a map of the rich and varied literary landscape of the North.