Swithun Cooper is one the 2025 London Writers Awards cohort. He’s been named one of two runners up for the 2025 Desperate Literature Short Fiction Prize, run by the Desperate Literature bookshop in Madrid, Spain. This years prize was won by Shastri Akella, and Alisha Dietzman was also a runner up.
Swithun Cooper is a researcher and tutor. His poems and stories have appeared in The London Magazine, Magma and The Rialto, and anthologies including Queer Life, Queer Love 2 and Unreal Sex. He has won an Eric Gregory Award, and in 2023 he was shortlisted for FBA New Voices. He joined the 2025 London Writers Awards programme in February this year. The programme runs until November.
Swithun’s story Expansion Street earned him his place as runner up. He’ll receive €1,000 (£866) and a consultation with a literary agent from Johnson & Alcock. All 11 shortlisted writers will be published by Desperate Literature in their annual collection, Eleven Stories 2025, and will be invited to read at a number of events, the first of which will be a launch event at the Desperate Literature bookshop, followed by a launch at Burley Fisher Books in London in the spring of 2026.
Another of this years London Writers Awardees, Sukie Wilson, on the same programme as Swithun, won the Desperate Literature Short Fiction Prize in 2024.
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Read more about the Desperate Literature Short Fiction Prize on their website.
Published 14 August 2025.