In this essay, shortlisted for the 2016 Feature Writing Competition, SUSMITA BHATTACHARYA recommends Janice Pariat’s collection Boats on Land: ‘…an amalgamation of folklore, magic-realism and a celebration of the natural beauty of north-eastern India, which has not had much exposure to the rest of the country or the world…’
In this essay, shortlisted for the 2016 Feature Writing Competition, JONATHAN PINNOCK and his ‘mentor’ discuss the short stories of Jorge Luis Borges: ‘In all my years of reading critiques of Borges’s work, I have yet to come across a single piece of straight prose. Without exception, every single writer has, for better or worse, succumbed to the siren call of pastiche…’
In this essay, shortlisted for the 2016 Feature Writing Competition, DAN POWELL gives voice to a man suffering from writer’s block: ‘‘Where Will You Go When Your Skin Cannot Contain You?’ still haunts him. He knows he must unpick what exactly this story has done to him before he can begin writing his own…’
MARY O’DONNELL, runner-up in the 2016 Feature Writing Competition, experiences a change of heart after reading Alice Munro’s ‘Family Furnishings’: ‘At times, I have struggled with what I regarded as tonally monotonous accounts of life in southwestern Ontario, where the author grew up … But, finally, ‘Family Furnishings’ has embedded itself after several readings like a ring shank masonry nail in a particularly unyielding piece of wood (me)…’
TYLER MILLER, runner-up in the 2016 Feature Writing Competition, recommends The Martian Chronicles: ‘In 1950, precisely halfway through a century dominated by scientific endeavour and discovery, Ray Bradbury – the man from Illinois – released this slender volume filled with rocket ships, Martian cities, ray guns, telepathy, and interplanetary conquest. But, as Borges noted, from the very start The Martian Chronicles departed radically from its brethren…’
FIRST PLACE: ‘The Iron Which Pierces the Heart’ by ALEX COULTON – the winning essay in the 2016 THRESHOLDS International Short Fiction Feature Writing Competition…
NICOLE MANSOUR looks at the tradgedy and comedy in Donald Antrim’s debut collection, The Emerald Light in the Air: ‘Antrim’s prose is vivid yet uncluttered, bringing to mind the economy of John Cheever, as well as the fairy tale surrealism of Donald Barthelme…’
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…’
MARGARET SESS-HAWKINS takes us back to the early 1900s with an exploration of the humour in P.G. Wodehouse’s Jeeves and Wooster series: ‘It is … the lighthearted tone, the sheer joviality of the writing. Look through any modern short story collection, peruse a serious literary magazine, and you would be hard-pressed to find such comedy…’
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…’
