SUSMITA BHATTACHARYA makes a connection with ‘Rowing to Eden’ by Amy Bloom: ‘What makes me connect to this particular story is the absence of any sentimentality or bleakness. This is a study of human relationships in the face of problems. There is a coldness of facts, and yet the tongue-in-cheek observations of the cancer patient and her carers often produce a mental chuckle…’
RICHARD BUXTON, runner-up in the 2015 Thresholds Competition, rediscovers the American South through the stories of Tim Gautreaux’s collection Waiting for the Evening News: ‘These stories are replete with his love and understanding of his home…’
DAN POWELL, runner-up in the Thresholds Competition, considers the themes of Norwegian author Kjell Askildsen’s short stories: ‘The map of Askildsen’s fictional world is adorned with warnings: here be minimalism, repetition, variation and precise, stark prose. His stories, like his sentences, allow no clutter…’
We are delighted to announce the results of the 2015 THRESHOLDS International Short Fiction Feature Writing Competition: ‘In our winning essay, Richard Newton considers a world without the writings of Herman Charles Bosman…’
ERINNA METTLER tells of how short story spoken word event Rattle Tales went from a whim to an annual competition and anthology in just four years…
Now in its fourth year, the THRESHOLDS International Feature Writing Competition celebrates the art of the short story form and awards one deserving essayist the top prize of £500.
Over the past few weeks, the team of THRESHOLDS judges has been busy reading and re-reading the entries, debating and deliberating. Now, we bring you.… The 2015 THRESHOLDS Features Award longlist.
We are delighted to bring you this exclusive interview with Edna O’Brien, winner of the Charleston-Chichester Award for a Lifetime’s Excellence in Short Fiction, recorded at the Small Wonder Short Story Festival last September…
VICTORIA HEATH looks at the story that made her want to write, ‘First Love, Last Rites’ by Ian McEwan: ‘The ‘it’ is often referred to more sinisterly as the ‘creature’ and it’s the crux that McEwan uses to turn this story from that of a starry-eyed relationship into something darker and far more interesting…’
LELA TREDWELL recommends Robert Shearman’s collection Everyone’s Just So So Special: ‘His writing is as good as you’re going to get to a dictionary definition of special: ‘better, greater and otherwise different from what is usual’. And it’s for his third collection of short stories, in particular, that he is just so, so special, to me…’
