About

Photo credit: Diana Moschitz 

F.C. Malby has travelled widely, teaching English in the Czech Republic, in Badjao communities in the Philippines, and in London. She is a qualified teacher, and is about take up her third post as a school governor. Malby is passionate about education, and graduated with a first class joint honours BA(Ed) degree in Geography and Education. She has also worked as a portrait and landscape photographer, and has just completed a master’s degree. 

Her second collection of short stories, A Place of Unfinished Sentences was published in September 2024. Described as “Intense, beautifully realised and ice-sharp,” the collection includes new, unpublished work alongside stories that have appeared in In Defence of Pseudoscience: Reflex Fiction Volume Five (Reflex Press, July 2022), with a story longlisted in the Reflex Press Quarterly International Flash Competition, and a story in a collection from Pens of the Earth, Wild Seas, Wilder Cities (Pigeon Books, Oct 2024). All profits from sales of Wild Seas, Wilder Cities will go to the Solent Seagrass Restoration Project. Several stories from A Place of Unfinished Sentences have also been placed in competitions and literary magazines worldwide.

F.C. Malby’s second novel, Dead Drop (Linen Press, 2022), described as a “fast-paced, intelligent thriller,” takes you on a journey through Vienna’s art underworld. Her debut short story collection, My Brother Was a Kangaroo (2015), includes award-winning stories, many of which have been published various in literary magazines and journals. “The stories will resonate with you long after finishing.” Avril Joy, Costa Short Story Award Winner.

Her debut novel, Take Me to the Castle (2012), set in early 1990s Czech Republic, won The People’s Book Awards (2013). 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 short fiction has been longlisted in The New Writer Magazine Annual Prose and Poetry Prizes, won Publication of the Year in the Spillwords Press Awards, and won the Litro Magazine Environmental Disaster Fiction Competition. Her work was 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.

F.C. Malby’s short fiction has been widely published online, including Litro Magazine, Ether Books, Spontaneity Magazine, Ellipsis Zine, Ad Hoc Fiction, Vending Machine Press, Flash Fiction Magazine, Paragraph Planet, Train Lit Magazine, The Drabble, Spelk Fiction, Fictive Dream, Virtual Zine, The Cabinet of Heed, Flash Fiction Magazine, Mystery Tribune, Lunate Fiction, Idle Ink, Roi Fainéant Press, and Five Minute Literary Magazine, among others.

Her work has also been published in 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. Her poetry has been published in various online journals and podcasts, with four poems published most recently in Cable Street Press (July 2025). 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’.

F.C. Malby is a reader for writing competitions, and has given writing workshops in schools and readings at book groups, including a young carers group in Suffolk. Having lived in Vienna, Austria, for eight years, she now lives in the South East of England with her family. She enjoys Jazz, art and coastlines.

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