About

Photo credit: Diana Moschitz 

F.C. Malby is an ordained minister and a qualified teacher, graduating with a first class joint honours BA(Ed) degree in Geography, Education and the Environment. She has also worked as a portrait and landscape photographer, and has a master’s degree in Theology. 

Her debut novel, Take Me to the Castle (2012), set during the 90s Velvet Revolution in what was then Czechoslovakia, won The People’s Book Awards in 2013. Described as an ‘elaborate interweaving of historical events with personal stories,’ and a powerful ‘portrayal of people dealing with massive national and personal change in Eastern Europe.’ Malby’s second novel, Dead Drop (Linen Press, 2022), described as a ‘fast-paced, intelligent thriller,’ follows a breath-taking journey of heists through the art underworld in Vienna and Berlin. 

Malby’s poetry has been published in various online journals and podcasts, with four poems published most recently in Cable Street Press. Her short fiction has been widely published internationally, both online and in print, including the Flash Flood Journal for the 10th Anniversary of National Flash Fiction Day, and in The South Shore Review, Issue 6, for the National Flash Fiction Day Edition.

She is a contributor to four print anthologies, Wild Seas, Wilder Cities (Pigeon Books, Oct 2024), In Defence of Pseudoscience: Reflex Fiction Volume Five (Reflex Press, 2022), Unthology 8 (Unthank Books, 2016), and Hearing Voices: The Litro Anthology of New Fiction (Kingston University Press, 2015), alongside Pulitzer prize winner, Anthony Doerr. The anthology is described as containing ‘some of the most exciting and unique new voices to have appeared in modern fiction over the last few years.’

Her debut short story collection, My Brother Was a Kangaroo (2015), includes award-winning stories, many of which have been published in various literary magazines and journals. ‘The stories will resonate with you long after finishing,’ Avril Joy, Costa Short Story Award Winner. Her second collection of short stories, A Place of Unfinished Sentences (2024) is described as ‘intense, beautifully realised and ice-sharp stories,’ Jonathan Taylor, author and Senior Lecturer in Creative Writing, University of Leicester. The collection includes new, unpublished work alongside stories placed in competitions and literary magazines. 

Malby’s story stories were shortlisted by Ad Hoc Fiction, TSS Publishing and Lunate Fiction. ‘We were absolutely staggered by the quality of the writing by the four runners-up. Each one a micro marvel. Competition was fierce.’ Lunate Fiction. Her work was also longlisted in The New Writer Magazine Annual Prose and Poetry Prizes and the Reflex Press Quarterly International Flash Competition. She won the Litro Magazine Environmental Disaster Fiction Competition and Publication of the Year in the Spillwords Press Awards. 

Malby has given writing workshops in schools and readings at book groups, including a young carers group in Suffolk. She has given book readings at the Unthank Books launch of Unthology 8, at The Library in Norwich, and at a Pens of the Earth event in collaboration with ‘The Great Big Green Week’. She is also a reader for various writing competitions.

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