Sian Hughes | Books

portfolio_page-template-default,single,single-portfolio_page,postid-331,qode-quick-links-1.0,ajax_fade,page_not_loaded,,qode_grid_1300,qode_popup_menu_push_text_top,qode-content-sidebar-responsive,qode-theme-ver-11.1,qode-theme-bridge,wpb-js-composer js-comp-ver-5.1.1,vc_responsive

Books

I’m a writer whose debut collection of short stories, ‘Pain Sluts’ was shortlisted for the ‘2022 Wales Book of the Year’. I was also a finalist in the 2025 Rhys Davies Short Story Award and published in the recent ‘The Man on the Train‘ award anthology. My most recent collection will likely be published in 2027. Lots of my stories and other scribbles have also appeared in anthologies, journals, zines, and chapbooks, whilst others have been adapted as award-winning short films. More on my short films here.

As well as working on a second collection of short stories, I’m also leaning-into my bilingual heritage and the cultural and literary potential of bilingualism and am currently working on a collection of stories in Welsh, which will operate alongside an English language meta narrative in the cloud.

For a fuller list of publications see below:

PAIN SLUTS

In this new collection, darkly comic and often surreal, a group of disparate individuals seek increasingly unorthodox ways to flee the difficulties of their lives.

A young woman and her foetus are bizarrely reunited. A teenager performs a defiant striptease in front of the funeral corteges passing her bedroom window. A grieving widow takes on the sinister rapacious treehouse in next door’s garden.

“Exquisite storytelling that punches hard with dark humour.”

– Nation Cymru –

“Touching stories of everyday drama, affection, and dissociation, some flagged with a cosmic backdrop, others, glimpsed through an uncomfortable aura.”

– New Welsh Review –

“Sian Hughes’ delightful imagination and technical talent makes each story a unique treat.”

– Boyd Clack –
Creator of High Hopes and Satellite City

“Sian Hughes is an immaculate stylist, and Pain Sluts is one exquisite and harrowing revelation after another. In this magnificent collection, Hughes claims a darkly radiant fictional territory that is all her own.”

– Anthony Trevelyan –
Author of The Weightless World
Longlisted for the 2016 Desmond Elliott Prize

“In this wonderfully visceral collection, with its echoes of AM Homes and the early transgressive short stories of Ian McEwan, Sian Hughes has fashioned her own brand of distinctly South Walian Gothic, full of bodies and their bloody mysteries, people and their hidden perverse selves.”

– John Williams –
Author of The Cardiff Trilogy

“Haunting and hilarious, tender and tumultuous. A bold and original collection that depicts life for women in contemporary south Wales in all its mundanity and quirkiness. Thrills from beginning to end.”

– Rachel Trezise –
Author of Fresh Apples and Easy Meat
Winner of the inaugural 2006 Dylan Thomas Prize

“Laden with love, loss and longing, Pain Sluts illuminates Sian Hughes’s extraordinary ability to create believable characters that brave our brittle world, often in outlandish or unusual ways. Sharp and tender, true and wise, these stories announce the arrival of a uniquely talented new voice in British fiction.”

https://www.waterstones.com/book/pain-sluts/sian-hughes/tomek-dzido/9781916325845

https://blackwells.co.uk/bookshop/product/Pain-Sluts-by-Hughes-Sian/9781916325845

A paperback or kindle version or Pain Sluts available from Amazon bookstore via this link:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Pain-Sluts-Sian-Hughes/dp/191632584X/ref=sr_1_1?crid=3H56NX5YCYFFZ&keywords=pain+sluts+sian+hughes&qid=1658476435&s=books&sprefix=pain+sluts+sian+hughes%2Cstripbooks%2C61&sr=1-1

YOU ARE NOT ALONE

A 2020 collection of short stories published by Storgy Books, in close partnership with the Big Issue Foundation, Shelter, Centrepoint, and The Bristol Methodist Centre.

All proceeds will go to help those affected by homelessness during – and after – the Covid crisis.

https://storgy.com/2020/05/22/you-are-not-alone/

https://www.amazon.co.uk/You-Are-Not-Alone-2020/dp/1916325890

THE MAN ON THE TRAIN

Twelve compelling, original stories about friendship, family, fragility and love from the winners of the 2025 Rhys Davies Short Story Award, including ‘Fat Slug Lady’ by finalist Sian Hughes.

An unnamed man travels towards Aberystwyth, wrestling with his own internal thought processes punctuated by childhood memories; a young woman adopts a fern baby while another befriends a giant African land snail; a group of men and one woman gather at Friday club to hear Eirwyn’s wolf story; and a class of boys find themselves with their recently engaged teacher in Craig y Ddinas for a climbing expedition. A small unspoilt island is infiltrated by a ketchup-obsessed business man promising tourism income; and unemployed thirty-year-old Bonita challenges her neighbourhood’s fixation with lemon trees.

To purchase a copy of ‘The Man on the Train’ visit Parthian Books here.