The THRESHOLDS International Feature Writing Competition is now in its fifth year – celebrating all that the short story form has to offer and awarding one deserving essayist the top prize of £500…
MIKE SMITH takes a look at the unusual structure of Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch’s curious story: ‘The structure notably presents it as two quite disconnected stories; the only obvious connections between them are the author and his narrative proxy, and the fact that both are written as if seen from the perspective of the eponymous cottage…’
K J ORR on poetry and the short story form: ‘As a short story writer my relationship with poetry is marked most of all by a lack of self-consciousness: by lightness, flexibility, pure pleasure. Friends recommend poems, or poets, and I magpie favoured fragments, which are charged too with my own memories of time and place and connection…’
Over the past weeks, the team of THRESHOLDS judges has been busy reading and re-reading the entries, debating and deliberating. Now, we bring you.… The 2016 THRESHOLDS Features Award longlist.
NAFISA MUHTADI discovers the power of ugly prose: ‘The more I read short stories that are written in the lyrical style beloved by some competition judges, the more I crave ugliness in prose. Poetic narratives with windswept thoughts lyrically describing landscapes, rivers and seas are not for me…’
ALLYSON DOWLING looks at the evocative description in ‘Boule de Suif’ by Guy de Maupassant: ‘Maupassant was incapable of writing a dull sentence. His prose is naturalistic, full of finely wrought and vivid detail…’
CLAIRE EDWARDS walks us through Raymond Carver’s classic short story, Cathedral: ‘It is as if he has brought the ancient Greek character Tiresias, whose blindness is compensated for by second sight, into the prosaic setting of a living room’.
‘I am intrigued by the areas in which the ideas behind works of art reflect those behind short stories; the less tangible, psychological links – the things that light up my subconscious when I’m reading a story or looking at a work of art…’ DAVID FRANKEL explores the overlap between art and short fiction.
PODCAST: In the first instalment of this series of Short Story Masterclass podcasts, JAC CATTANEO talks with award winning author JANE GARDAM about the never-ending nature of the short story form, use of the uncanny, and Death on a Yamaha…
‘Elizabeth Bowen’s commitment to the short story was extraordinary. Best known for her novels, she has said, according to Lee, that she would give up any of these for her short stories…’ AIMEE GASSTON draws us into the life and writing of Elizabeth Bowen.
