Feature Writing Competition 2016
NOW CLOSED: with a £500 first prize. You have until Sunday 06 March, 11:59pm (GMT) to get your feature essays in for the 2015 THRESHOLDS International Short Fiction Feature Writing Competition…
Building a World
SHARON TELFER demonstrates how the world of a short story can be just as absorbing as that of a novel, through William Faulkner’s ‘Dry September’: ‘…there it was, a world complete in itself, at once believable yet unsettlingly strange, resonating long after the book is closed…’
Festive Story: O. Henry’s ‘The Cop and the Anthem’
In a special Christmas post, we bring you O. Henry’s wintry tale ‘The Cop and the Anthem’: ‘When wild geese honk high of nights, and when women without sealskin coats grow kind to their husbands, and when Soapy moves uneasily on his bench in the park, you may know that winter is near at hand…’
Listen. Come in Here. You Want to Know About This
VICTORIA HEATH looks at what makes a great first line, by examining Best British Short Stories 2015: ‘…this is a place where the best of British is collected, and each of these stories must have hooked, from the very first word, the members of the SALT Publishing editorial board…’
These Seven
SUSMITA BHATTACHARYA discovers a city through the eyes of its resident writers in the Nottingham UNESCO bid anthology These Seven: ‘It is a unique exercise in delving into the everyday lives of people in this city, making Nottingham sparkle and breathe and come to life…’
My Hundredth Tale
MIKE SMITH writes about A.E. Coppard’s ‘My Hundredth Tale’ and autobiography in fiction: ‘…what struck me, reading ‘My Hundredth Tale’, were the truths, about writing, about living in poverty, and about relationship…’
The Mysterious Mrs Bathurst
DAVID FRANKEL finds unsettling qualities in Rudyard Kipling’s ‘Mrs Bathurst’: ‘Written in 1904, ‘Mrs Bathurst’ is a story that doesn’t fit readily with a modern reader’s expectations of Rudyard Kipling. There is no imperialism or the fairy tale charm of The Jungle Book. Instead, it is filled with unease and an air of melancholy that set it apart from all but a very few of his other stories…’
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…’