The Art of Researching
In this downloadable essay, Professor of Creative Writing VASILIS PAPAGEORGIOU discusses artistic research and the mechanisms that have grown around our work in the academic system.
The Knuckle in the Prose
DAVID BUTLER scrutinises the knottiness of Colin Barrett’s prose in the collection Young Skins: ‘…he explains that, rather than character or plot, the first impulse to write a story, and the focus of interest, remains squarely with language…’
The Red-Haired Miss Daintreys
CHRISTINE GENOVESE discusses Rosemond Lehmann’s use of personal memory in her short story, The Red-Haired Miss Daintreys: ‘…a meticulously structured masterpiece, teasingly disguised as haphazard recollections from childhood…’
Flashes of Insight
MARCELLA O’CONNOR takes a look at the writing of flash fiction, in particular, that of Stuart Dybek: ‘Although flash fiction has gained recognition among writers themselves, criticism and theory have been slow to catch up and Dybek’s flash fictions are often relegated to the poetry section of literary magazines…’
Voices of Impoverishment
G.F. PHILLIPS considers the impoverished voices in Carver’s short stories: ‘It is a world that conjures up the people’s goal as a means of achieving some kind of ‘American Dream’ in a land made for freedom and plenty. His characters think, speak and act out their shapeless lives, and yet, they adopt a common language…’
Author Profile: Maeve Brennan
ELEANOR FITZSIMONS profiles the writing life of Maeve Brennan: ‘…it should have come as no great surprise to readers of The New Yorker when the Long-Winded Lady, columnist and faithful, if eccentric, documenter of life in the eponymous city, was unmasked as Irishwoman Maeve Brennan, an immigrant who had arrived in her mid-twenties…’
A Servant of his Soil
KENNETH STEVEN recommends ‘Clay’ by Scottish writer Lewis Grassic Gibbon: ‘When you read Grassic Gibbon’s stories, you feel that cold sore in the ends of fingers and feet, because he succeeds in putting the very smell of that soil on the page…’
How to Create a Sense of Movement in a Story
WRITING EXERCISE: SHAUN LEVIN, creator of the Writing Maps guides for writers, looks at movement in short stories and how to check you’re getting enough: ‘Kafka manages, in a 181-word story, to include an account of: 1) what is happening, 2) questions regarding what might actually be happening, and 3) a mention of what had been happening before all that is happening started…’