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Archive for the ‘Places to Read New Fiction’ Category

Brittle Star is a great little magazine of poetry and short fiction published three times a year – without a penny of subsidy –  by an indefatigable team of editors, among them Louisa Hooper who took part in last year’s Novelists’ Club. They will be launching issue 28 on Wednesday 30 March 2011 at the Barbican Library, Silk St, London, EC2Y 8DS.

There will be readings of poetry and short stories,  refreshments, a chance to meet the editors, and – most importantly – the opportunity to get the latest copy hot off the press. The event is free, but you need to book tickets through the Barbican Library (020 7638 0569) as numbers are limited.

Hilary Mantel, Michael Faber, Tibor Fischer and Susan Hill are among the well-known names on the longlist for the Sunday Times EFG Private Bank Short Story Award 2011. But the list also includes several newcomers, including former bus conductor Fabian Ackler and actor and puppeteer Erin Soros. The prize is open to authors of previously unpublished work or stories first published after 1st January 2010. The shortlist will be announced on 13th March and the winner revealed at the Sunday Times Oxford Literary Festival on 8th April. Each shortlisted author will receive £500 and the overall winner receives £30,000.

Judge A S Byatt said: “The stories we read this year were both varied and well crafted. We had considerable difficulty in narrowing the list to 20 . . . We have the fantastic and the precisely real, the shocking and the witty, the distressing and the invigorating. We have stories by famous writers and stories by the unknown. Some are succinct and some are elegiac. All were debated with passion.” More information about the prize can be found on the excellent STORY website.

Congratulations to Annemarie Neary – who took part in Microfictions in 2008 and the first Novelists’ Club in 2009 –  for her fine story in February’s edition of Litro.

Annemarie’s work has been shortlisted for the Bridport Prize for the past three years and she was a prizewinner in 2009. She was a prizewinner in the Fish and Bryan MacMahon short story competitions (Ireland), and had an Honorable Mention in the Lorian Hemingway contest (US). Her stories  have been published in anthologies, including, in 2010, 50 Stories for Pakistan, Ways of Falling and Stories of Loss and Deception. Click here to read her story ‘Endless’ in The Litro Anti-Love Edition

The Bridport Prize has launched a new venture designed to ‘investigate the relationship between books and films’. Curated by novelist Jonathan Coe, the scheme is inviting  people to submit film adaptations of some of last year’s winning stories in Bridport’s flash fiction category. For more details of how to enter visit the From Page to Screen website

February 5 has been designated as ‘Save Our Libraries Day’, in an effort to bring greater attention to the crisis facing many public libraries.

Many local authorities are slashing funding to libraries in the wake of government funding cuts. Warwickshire County Council, for example, has just announced plans to close almost half of that county’s 34 libraries.

If you can spare the time this Saturday, call in to your own local library and show that they have your support. More information on these sites:

Bookseller Library Campaign on Facebook

Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals

Voices for the Library

The Short Review, a website devoted to the short story form, is currently celebrating its 3rd birthday. It’s a wonderful place to discover new stories and to read interviews with writers, including a recent one with the American author Lydia Davis. At the moment its Twitter feed focuses on ‘Story Sunday’, so it’s a rich source of recommendations for great  stories to read online.  Happy Birthday Short Review!

A new online forum dedicated exclusively to the writing, criticism and study of the short story launches this month. Thresholds currently features an exclusive interview with Hanif Kureishi about his recently published Collected Stories, and in October there will be a live Question & Answer session with Adam Marek, author of the weirdly wonderful collection Instruction Manual for Swallowing.

Run by Loree Westron, a PhD student at the University of Chichester, and Alison McLoed, author of  the sparkling collection Fifteen Modern Tales of Attraction, the site is primarily aimed at academics and postgraduate students, but it’s packed full of interesting material that will appeal to a much wider range of readers and writers. Members of the public can access the blog, articles and resource lists. Click here to visit the site: Thresholds

Founded by the film director Francis Ford Coppola in 1997, Zoetrope  All-Story is a quarterly magazine that aims to explore ‘the  intersection of story and art, fiction and film’. The current issue carries work by Helen Oyeyemi and Tea Obreht; contributors to previous issues include Ethan Coen, Miranda July, Helen Simpson, Woody Allen, Hanif Kureishi and other luminaries.

The magazine also runs an annual short fiction contest, which closes on Oct 1. The winning story will be published in their Spring issue and all short-listed writers will be considered for representation by the William Morris Agency, ICM and other agencies. More details here: Zoetrope All Story Contest

Flash Fiction is being broadcast for the first time this week on BBC R4’s Afternoon Reading programme. Sixteen stories by Short Review website founder Tania Hershman will be featured at 3.30pm on Tues June 29th, Wed June 30th and Thursday July 1st – read by the brilliant Nicola Walker (“Ruth” from Spooks”) and Tom Goodman-Hill.

Some of the stories are from Tania’s book  The White Road and Other Stories, but most are new. In her capacity as writer-in-residence at Bristol University’s Science Faculty, Tania has also been invited to take part in a discussion entitled “Blinded by Science” for Radio 4’s Off the Page, to be broadcast at a future date.

If you’re otherwise engaged at 3.30pm on a weekday, BBC programmes can be heard for seven days after the broadcast date by clicking on the BBC Radio 4 website.

I’m pleased to say that a short story of mine called ‘Waiting’ has appeared in issue 2 of a new South Asian literary journal called The Milestone. Click on this link to read the story.