Shortlisted in the 2018 Feature Writing Competition PETER JORDAN examines the influence of dyslexia and the paintings of Cezanne on the short stories of Ernest Hemingway: ‘The defining qualities of Hemingway’s minimalist writing — short sentences, short paragraphs, the short concrete word over its longer equivalent, mistrust of subordinate clauses, omission, and suggestion — here perfectly characterise dyslexic writing…’
DAVID BUTLER finds cruelty in the pages of Katherine Mansfield’s stories: ‘I would argue that Mansfield’s aesthetic is frequently more disquieting, even cruel – in the sense that her acquaintance D. H. Lawrence called Dostoevsky’s talent cruel…’
JESSICA WHYTE, runner-up in the 2017 Feature Writing Competition, recommends ‘Miss Brill’ by Katherine Mansfield: ‘Katherine Mansfield’s short story ‘Miss Brill’ was written to be read out loud. In early 1921, shortly after the story was first published in the magazine The Athenaeum, Katherine Mansfield wrote to her brother-in-law Richard Murry: ‘after I’d written it, I read it aloud – numbers of times – just as one would play over a musical composition, trying to get it nearer and nearer to the expression of Miss Brill – until it fitted her…’
Runner-up in the Thresholds Feature Writing Competition: GILL THOMPSON recommends the short fiction of Katherine Mansfield: ‘The very best short story writers, and Katherine Mansfield is clearly one of these, can distill a profound theme into a word or phrase…’
CATH HUMPHRIS explores ‘An Indiscreet Journey’ by Katherine Mansfield: ‘…a breezily narrated tale describing a young woman’s journey across France to visit her lover during the first world war. Like so much of Mansfield’s fiction, the story is a pen-portrait of an actual event…’
