Festive Story: Alison MacLeod’s ‘There Are Precious Things’
In a special Christmas post, we are delighted to bring you ALISON MACLEOD’s festive short story ‘There are Precious Things’:
The Family Dynamic
J.L . BOGENSCHNEIDER looks at domestic secrets and lies in stories by Heinrich Böll and Julio Cortázar : ‘Here then, are two families faced with the same problem: a fragile individual who must be protected from the truth at all costs…’
Eisenheim the Illusionist: Symbolic Threats and Literal Perils
SHORT STORY ADAPTATIONS: this month, Dr. CHRIS MACHELL looks at the limitations of film in the adaptation of Steven Millhauser’s Eisenheim the Illusionist: ‘Working in the ‘dark realm of transgressions’, Millhauser’s Eisenheim undermines the distinction between reality and illusion…’
Short Story Masterclass with… Jon McGregor
PODCAST: In the second instalment of this year’s Short Story Masterclass podcasts, Jac Cattaneo talks with multi award-winning author, Jon McGregor, about the loss of innocence, the dangers of complacency, playing with short story form, and visions of the apocalypse in his short story collection, ‘This Isn’t the Sort of Things That Happens to Someone Like You’…
Seasonal Writing, Themes of Isolation
STORY DISCUSSION: Author MARY O’DONNELL discusses the changing themes in seasonal stories:’The difference between the then of O. Henry, and the now of contemporary writers, is that we write in a highly nuanced moral atmosphere, so nuanced that the building of ‘uplifting’ lessons into our stories is often avoided…’