PhD Student Wins Prestigious Ploughshares Short Story Prize

We are thrilled to announce that Molly Aitken, current SHU PhD student in Creative Writing, has won the prestigious Alice Hoffman Prize For Fiction 2024 for her story ‘Thresholds’, published in the 2023 Spring edition of Ploughshares.

You can read the winning story here, and an interview with the author here.

Molly’s second novel, Bright I Burn is out on June 6th, 2024, and is available for pre-order here.


Molly Aitken’s short fiction has appeared in Ploughshares and Banshee, and has been dramatised for BBC Radio 4. Her debut novel, The Island Child, was longlisted for the Authors’ Club Best First Novel Award. Her second novel, Bright I Burn is out June 6th from Canongate in the UK, and October 9th from Knopf in the USA.

Molly’s studying for her PhD in Creative Writing at Sheffield Hallam University.