ALISON GIBBS examines how characters are shaped by politics in Nadine Gordimer’s short story, ‘The Catch’: ‘While Nadine Gordimer was known for both her fiction and her outspoken opposition to apartheid in her native South Africa, she always insisted that politics was not the driving motivation for her stories.’
PAT TOMPKINS considers the flawed but powerful story of human aspiration and the consequences of industrialisation: ‘Life in the Iron Mills’ brings us a view of outsiders, those ignored and disdained by the wider society. As the best short stories do, it gives voice to the lonely…’
‘After reading just one story, ‘Hollow’, Andre Dubus wrote: ‘I wish someone could have saved him’. Joyce Carol Oates compared him to Hemingway; Jayne Anne Phillips – a fellow West Virginian – to the Joyce of Dubliners…’ In this Author Profile, SEAN MARTIN shows us the brief writing life of Breece D’J Pancake.
