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J. Ashley Smith J. Ashley Smith i(8909536 works by)
Born: Established: Cambridge, Cambridgeshire,
c
England,
c
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United Kingdom (UK),
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Western Europe, Europe,
;
Gender: Male
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BiographyHistory

J. Ashley Smith is a British–Australian writer of dark fiction. After studying film and creative writing in Sheffield, he spent fifteen years as a professional musician. He lives in the Blue Mountains.

Most Referenced Works

Awards for Works

y separately published work icon The Measure of Sorrow : Stories Atlanta : Meerkat Press , 2023 25917048 2023 selected work short story

'Shirley Jackson Award-winning author J. Ashley-Smith’s first collection, The Measure of Sorrow, draws together ten new and previously acclaimed stories of dark speculative fiction. In these pages a black reef holds the secret to an interminable coastal limbo; a father struggles to relate to his estranged children in a post-bushfire wilderness; an artist records her last days in conversation with her unborn child; a brother and sister are abandoned to the manifestations of their uncle’s insanity; a suburban neighbourhood succumbs to an indescribable malaise; teenage ravers fall in with an eldritch crowd; a sensitive New Age guy commits a terminal act of passive-aggression; a plane crash opens the door to the Garden of Eden; the new boy in the village falls victim to a fatal ruse; and a husband's unexpressed grief is embodied in the shadows of a crumbling country barn. Intelligent and emotionally complex, the stories in The Measure of Sorrow elude easy classification, lifting the veil on the wonder and horror of a world just out of true.

>Source: Publisher's blurb.

2023 finalist Aurealis Awards for Excellence in Australian Speculative Fiction Best Collection
The Tub 2022 single work short story horror
— Appears in: Midnight Echo , no. 17 2022;
2022 finalist Australian Shadows Award Short Fiction
y separately published work icon Ariadne, I Love You Atlanta : Meerkat Press , 2021 23625422 2021 single work novella horror

'Jude is dragged out of Alt-Country obscurity, out of the dismal loop of booze and sadness baths and the boundless, insatiable loneliness, to scrub up and fly to Australia for a last, desperate comeback tour. Hardly worth getting out of bed for—and he wouldn’t, if it weren’t for Coreen.

'But Coreen is dead. And, worse than that, she’s married. Jude’s swan-song tour becomes instead a terminal descent, into the sordid past, into the meaning hidden in forgotten songs, into Coreen’s madness diary, there to waken something far worse than her ghost.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

2022 winner Ditmar Awards Best Novella or Novelette
2021 winner Australian Shadows Award Paul Haines Award for Long Fiction
Last amended 17 Jun 2020 09:11:54
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