Looking for Love - Stephen Smythe

Looking For Love 40 Forty Word Stories

Stephen Smythe is a Mancunian writer. He was shortlisted for the Bridport Prize and longlisted for the Bath Flash Fiction Award shortly before completing an MA in Creative Writing, at Salford University. He won the Bangor Literary Journal FORTY WORDS Competition, in 2022, after being runner-up and shortlisted on several previous occasions. ‘Award-winning writer Stephen Smythe is a master of what not to say. Wit and melancholy underpin his words in equal measure. In Smythe’s 40-word flashes, the consensus is that the reader and writer play equal roles, putting themselves into each other’s shoes— the perfect verstehen.’ Amy Louise Wyatt ‘Before she was Gran, she had the best legs in Chorlton Palais… Stephen Smythe’s 40-word vignettes in Looking for Love paint a quirky, real, unexpectedly poignant picture of, among other things, online dating and its inevitable disappointments, intergenerational misunderstandings and their fallout, and the unfair world of zero‑hours contracts and the struggle to get by. Smythe is a master storyteller with a perfect sense of comic timing.’ Ian Seed