STEPHEN DEVEREUX examines ‘Oh Whistle, and I’ll Come to You, My Lad’, one of M.R. James’ spooky, supernatural stories: ‘M. R. James’ ghost stories have had an enormous influence, not only on other writers, but on the treatment of the supernatural in film and other popular forms…’
This year’s Edge Hill University Short Story Prize has been won by the seemingly unstoppable Kevin Barry for his collection Dark Lies The Island.
“For me the short story is my first love… I think that the genre has become more popular in recent years, particularly as more people are reading online, so they want more intense reads and the short story fits this perfectly – long may it continue.”
ANDREW LEON HUDSON discusses the stories of The New Yorker and the collection 20 Under 40: ‘I live in Madrid and I don’t read The New Yorker. But not because I live in Madrid. My reluctance has been reinforced for a number of years by almost everything my American friends say about it…’
JASON CLIFTON recommends the short stories of Robert Stone’s collection Bear and his Daughter: ‘Stone’s characters start out in a bad place and go downhill from there. They’ve crossed a line out of greed, despair, anger or moral conviction, and they are going to have a very hard time crossing back…’
JULIA ANDERSON recommends ‘The Orphan and the Mob’: ‘As I read the first sentence of ‘The Orphan and the Mob’, my eyes widened. At only sixteen words long, Julian Gough managed to insert into his first sentence: urination, a mob, and an orphanage burning down. Kudos to him…’
In this essay, KIRSTY WALTERS recommends The BBC International Short Story Award 2012 anthology: ‘Each one has, at its core, a theme of absence or disappearance. These are stories of missing people, death, and the ability to dispose of whatever we want, whenever we want…’
DORA D’AGOSTINO recommends ‘Silent Snow, Secret Snow’ by Conrad Aiken, a story about ‘Paul Hasleman, a boy who thinks, dreams and wishes for snow until it becomes an obsession…’
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.
