Editor Interviews: Rebecca O’Connor, The Moth
As part of our new series featuring the editors of literary magazines, David Frankel speaks with Rebecca O’Connor, from The Moth.
Off the Page and Into Our Lives
MELISSA FU finds writing inspiration within the pages of CG Menon’s debut collection, Subjunctive Moods: ‘This many-layered story is heady with a sense of old ghosts clutching old grudges and snickering at new mischief. I was struck by how different the settings and tones were in the two pieces, but the writing was equally captivating in both…’
Fifty Pounds by Weight in Ashes
MIKE SMITH examines the authorial commentary of Rudyard Kipling’s story ‘The Eye of Allah’: ‘Set in the monastery of St Illod it tells of the artist John of Burgos, who early on in the story, travels abroad to find ‘new devils’ to draw, to buy pigment, and to visit his ‘Infidel’ and pregnant unofficial wife…’
Teleological Cinema: Film as Language in Arrival
SHORT STORY ADAPTATIONS: this month, Dr. CHRIS MACHELL takes us into alien territory with Denis Villeneuve’s film adaptation of Ted Chiang’s ‘Story of Your Life’: ‘Villeneuve restructures the themes of Chiang’s text to explore the ways that the visual language of cinema represents time as an experiential phenomenon shaped by memory and emotion…’
Hanging on to Dear Life
‘The machinery of grace is always simple.’ Michael Donaghy, in his poem ‘Machines’, writes this of the blind leaps that love requires of us – faith’s gung-ho disregard for gravity. ‘So much is chance…’ PENNY BOXALL finds the emotional landscape of Alice Munro’s short story ‘Amundsen’ is a delicate balancing act.
What I Feel When I Talk About Short Stories
TRACY FELLS explores the emotional resonance of three very different short stories: ‘When you read a short story that thwacks an emotional punch or haunts your daydreams then you have to talk about it. I read at least one short story daily, so what prompts me to talk about specific pieces…?’
Food in Exile
FARHANA SHAIKH explores the homeliness of food in Jhumpa Lahiri’s debut collection: ‘In Lahiri’s Interpreter of Maladies food is more than just sustenance, it is purpose, priority and preoccupation…’
Meditations on Motherhood
FIRST PLACE: ‘Meditations On Motherhood’ by KATE FINEGAN – the winning essay in the 2018 THRESHOLDS International Short Fiction Feature Writing Competition…
2018 Feature Writing Competition Shortlist
COMPETITION SHORTLIST: The THRESHOLDS International Short Fiction Feature Writing Competition is now in its seventh year – celebrating all that the short story form has to offer and awarding one deserving essayist the top prize of £500…
The 2018 Competition Longlist
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 2018 THRESHOLDS Features Award longlist.