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Seasons of Yearning: Selections from Best British Short Stories, 2011-2025
Seasons of Yearning: selections from Nicholas Royle’s Best British Short Stories series 2011-2025
A matinee performance at the Crazy Coqs from 2:00 – 3:30 pm
Feel free to come early for drinks and nibbles!
Tickets available here.
Dubbed the “short story specialists” by The Sunday Times, WORDTheatreUK is a charitable organisation on a mission to connect people by sharing beautifully crafted literary works! Our signature Author • Actor Series features great actors who step into the finest contemporary short stories with the authors present. For our upcoming London matinee event at The Crazy Coqs in we have selected some of our favorites from Nicholas Royle’s annual Best British Short Stories series. We have two from the upcoming 2025 collection penned by David Bevan and Catrin Kean, along with others by Claire Dean, Tom Bromley and Leone Ross from earlier BBSS collections.
OUR CAST: Ayesha Antoine, Doña Croll, Karl Johnson, MyAnna Buring & Harry Lloyd
All five the authors will be in attendance.
You will understand our title when you are transported into these five atmospheric, richly conceived worlds…
Produced & Directed by Cedering Fox, WORDTheatre Artistic Director
Produced by Kirsty Peart, WORDTheatreUK Creative Partner,WORDTheatreUK Creative Partner,
Proceeds support WORDTheatre Campus, which offers live and digital performances of celebrated stories, paired with study guides, free to under-resourced schools in the UK & the US. Our programming is designed to ignite imaginations and encourage students to experience the joy of listening, of reading, the power of language, and the soul nurturing impact of great literature.
Actor Bios
MyAnna Buring
MyAnna Buring is an actress known for her roles in The Decent, Kill List, and Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn – Part I and II. She is also known for her television roles in BBC’s Ripper Street and The Witcher on Netflix.
Ayesha Antoine
Ayesha Antoine is an English actress. She is known for her roles portraying Rachel Baptiste in Holby City, and Poppy Silver in Grange Hill.
Karl Johnson
Karl Johnson is a Welsh actor, who has worked on stage, film and television. He has starred in Derek Jarman’s film Wittgenstein (1993), and King Lear (2018). He has a long list of theatre credits, performing with the National Theatre, London, the Royal Court Theatre, Royal Shakespeare Company, and the Old Vic.
Doña Croll
Doña Croll is a Jamaican-born British actress. She is best known for her British soap opera roles as Pearl McHugh in Channel 5’s Family Affairs and more recently as Vera Corrigan in the BBC soap opera Doctors, and as Emerald Fox in the popular BBC soap opera, EastEnders. Kroll is known most notably as playing the first black Cleopatra on the British Stage in Talawa Theatre Company’s production of Shakespeare’s Antony and Cleopatra in 1991, and Kate Keller in Arthur Miller’s All My Sons.
Harry Lloyd
Harry Lloyd is an English actor. He is known for his roles as King Richard III in The Lost King (2022), the voice of Viktor in the TV series Arcane, and Viserys Targaryen in the first season of the HBO series Game of Thrones. He has also appeared in the television shows Doctor Who, I, Jack Wright, Brave New World, and Counterpart.
Author Bios
David Bevan’s short stories have appeared in Best British Short Stories 2023 and 2025, as chapbooks in Nightjar Press, online in Fictive Dream and as a mini collection, ‘Sightings,’ with Confingo Publishing.
Leone Ross is a novelist, short story writer, editor and educator. She is the author of novels This One Sky Day, All The Blood Is Red and Orange Laughter [Faber] and the short story collection Come Let Us Sing Anyway [Peepal Tree Press]. She is the winner of the 2021 Manchester Prize for Fiction and her work has been nominated for the Women’s Prize, the Goldsmiths award, the RSL Ondjaate award, and the Edge Hill Prize, among others.
Catrin Kean is an award-winning Welsh writer whose debut novel, Salt, won the 2021 Rhys Davies Fiction Award, the Wales Arts Review People’s Choice Award, and the overall Wales Book of the Year Award.
Tom Bromley is an author, editor, creative writing tutor and ghost (not the scary kind). He is the author of a dozen works of fiction and non-fiction, has ghosted over twenty books, including prize-winners and international bestsellers, and has edited over 150 published titles. His website is www.tombromley.co.uk.
Claire Dean is a writer, maker, and archives conservator. She is the author of the short story collection The Museum of Shadows and Reflections. Her stories have appeared in magazines and anthologies, and have been heard at festivals and events, in a National Trust orchard, and along the length of the River Lune. Her website is www.clairedean.co.uk.