Ahead of International Short Story Day, and to celebrate the publication of Rattle Tales 2, ERINNA METTLER talks to us about how Rattle Tales has grown in the last two years and where their short story performances have led this Brighton-based co-operative.
‘The narrators are failed artists, poets and writers struggling to get by in a world that has left them hopeless, a world where the Mexican and Chilean dictatorship wars are a constant underlying backdrop…’ Discover the unusual writing techniques of Roberto Bolaño in this essay from ANUSHREE NANDE.
‘You could say Julio Cortázar was destined to write from the moment he was christened with the name Julio, after the French writer Jules Verne.’ HUGH FULHAM-McQUILLAN takes us through the life and works of Julio Cortázar.
‘Think Brief Encounter: tweed; the Boots Book Lending service (Taylor actually worked in one); tea at the Lyons’ Corner House; children in matching dressing gowns, hair brushed, coming down to kiss their parents goodnight…’ ALISON FISHER introduces us to the short stories of Elizabeth Taylor, writer.
‘This is one of those ‘perfect’ stories, with its three characters pleasingly balanced. Power, love and innocence. Guilt, selfishness, and trust…’ MIKE SMITH guides through the complexities of H.E. Bates’ short story ‘The Little Farm’.
‘The idea’s quite simple: short stories set in cities across the world, which you can listen to, or read in eBook form…’ JIM HINKS, Digital Editor at Comma Press, tells us how the Gimbal short story app arrived on our phones.
ALEX RUCZAJ climbs inside Anne Enright’s short story collection Taking Pictures: ‘Whenever I panicked that my stories weren’t about very much at all, it gave me permission to write boldly about ordinary things…’
‘For Sale. Baby Shoes. Never Worn.’ CHLOE DALTON takes a closer look at one of the shortest stories ever written…
TRACY MAYLATH guides us through the second-person narratives of Lorrie Moore’s Self-Help: ‘Everyone speaks in ‘yous’: ‘you feel’ when they mean ‘I felt’, ‘you know’ when they mean ‘I want you to understand me’. Perhaps that’s why we find it irritating in literature…’
‘A deeply unsettling tale, a psychological horror which is all the more disturbing because it is so finely wrought…’ JULIET WEST explores Truman Capote’s haunting short story ‘Miriam’.
