We Recommend – The Boat by Nam Le
Katherine Orr admits… I have always felt frustrated by the stock advice to the young writer: write what you know.
Word Packages, by Mike Smith
The significant package in prose fiction, and especially in the short story I suspect, is the paragraph. Stephen King suggests this in his On Writing. Groups of paragraph packages are often separated by a line space.
Adam Marek: Q and A
An extended version of Adam’s interview has now been filed under the tab Q&A tab at the top of the page.
How do we keep the fires burning?
I am three months into my MA and I find myself experimenting with ways in which my critical research can set up little fires under my creative practice, so that my creative juices (or impulses) don’t cool, congeal and sit in a fatty layer around the edges of my brain.
We Recommend – Collected Stories by Hanif Kureishi
Containing eight new stories, this collected edition of Kureishi’s short stories is essential reading for any serious fans of modern British fiction.
We Recommend – Alexander MacLeod
‘I’m obviously thrilled and surprised and almost stupefied that this little book made it through everything to get on the Giller List,’ explains Alexander MacLeod by email…
On Being Rejected, by Jane Hayward
What is a writer? The immediate definition which springs to my mind is that a writer is someone who is used to being rejected. The only people who are constantly...
Author Profile – Haruki Murakami
Murakami’s parents were strict, but allowed him freedom to go hiking and explore his environment. He was permitted to buy books on credit at the local bookstore, so long as they never included magazines or comics. He began to write for his school paper and fell in love with American detective novels…
Author Profile – Anne Enright
According to AS Byatt, ‘A good short story is always working towards its end.’ A comment I kept in mind when re-reading the stories of Anne Enright.
Reviewing Short Stories, by Pauline Masurel
I don’t regard myself as an academic, a journalist or a non-fiction writer. So reviews may seem a curious form for me to write. But I would argue that there is also something creative about concocting a coherent book review. It’s a statement that is, necessarily, partial and entirely personal and is also an exercise in constructing a ‘voice’ and a point of view for getting across your message.