Zoe Gilbert

Zoe Gilbert

Zoe Gilbert

Zoe Gilbert is a British author whose compact, imaginative fiction explores the liminal spaces between folklore and contemporary life. Her work demonstrates a distinctive ability to inhabit strange, often unsettling narratives with emotional precision, crafting stories that feel simultaneously timeless and urgently modern. Gilbert’s prose is characterised by a lyrical intensity and an almost mythic quality, drawing readers into worlds where the magical and the mundane collide in surprising ways.

Gilbert’s short story collection Fishskin, Hareskin brought her significant recognition when it won the Costa Book Award for Short Story in 2014. The collection showcases her range and inventiveness across a series of tightly crafted tales, each one inhabiting a different emotional and narrative landscape. This award win marked Gilbert as a distinctive voice in contemporary British short fiction, establishing her reputation for stories that operate on multiple levels—as psychological explorations, as contemporary fables, and as formally ambitious literary work that refuses easy categorisation.

• Fishskin, Hareskin

  2014CostaShort Story