From The Willesden Herald
To celebrate the launch of the 2019 Benedict Kiely Short Story Competition, we caught up with last years winner, Louise Farr, to hear more about her work and what competitions like this mean to emerging writers. Omagh Literary Festival: Hi Louise. Tell us a bit about your winning short story, Sing to Me, and how […]
The New Yorker’s Fiction Issue is out today! Read Ta-Nehisi Coates’s “Conduction”: “I was fresh out of Virginia, fresh out of the pit, my remarkable escape still alive in my mind.” https://t.co/cilQdJ3qji
— New Yorker Fiction (@NYerFiction) June 3, 2019
The flagship annual summer feast of fiction that keeps readers and writers delighted and hopeful respectively. See This Week In Fiction for many more short stories, interviews and readings.
The Willesden Herald New Short Stories Story of the Month
June 2019: Set Dance by Angela Sherlock
“Suddenly, very precisely placing the oddity of individual lives in the perspective of a bigger, slower rural pattern where everything can be accepted…Angela Sherlock’s Set Dance, a very unusual story, a very interesting story.” (Maggie Gee)
Angela Sherlock has worked in engineering and in education, but now lives in Devon where she writes full time. She has published reviews and articles but now concentrates on fiction. ‘Set Dance’ comes from her collection, To know they dreamed, which explores the Irish diaspora. She is currently working on a collection that takes its themes from elements of the periodic table. Her stories have appeared in literary journals and anthologies, the most recent online in Virtual Zine. (www.angelasherlock.com)
“Set Dance” is also available in Willesden Herald: New Short Stories 5 together with stories by eleven other outstanding writers.
Think your short stories could be better?
I’ve put together STARTING TO WRITE – A Free 10 Lesson Course on Writing Short Stories.
It’s all now online – waiting for you:
https://t.co/xukzTWB1kc
pic.twitter.com/RXBa0xdHnc
#writingadvice #creativewriting #motivation— Toby Litt (@tobylitt) May 25, 2019
The Willesden Herald New Short Stories Story of the Month
May 2019: Rash by Megan Taylor
“The ancient hinged mirror reflected back three Frans, each one streaked. Beyond her, the walls of her bedroom were a faded peach, her teenage posters removed long ago, but in the lamp’s glow, the walls appeared duskier than usual and Fran also looked muted, almost satiny, despite the rash.”
Megan Taylor is the author of three novels, ‘How We Were Lost’ (Flame Books, 2007), ‘The Dawning’ (Weathervane Press, 2010) and ‘The Lives of Ghosts’ (Weathervane Press, 2012), as well as a collection, ‘The Woman Under the Ground and Other Stories’ (Weathervane Press, 2014), which includes her Willesden Herald’s shortlisted ‘Rash’.
Recent short stories have been placed in several competitions, and appeared in a variety of publications, including Dark Lane’s 6th and 7th anthologies and Neon. A fourth novel, ‘We Wait’, is due out from Eyrie Press in 2019. (Website: www.megantaylor.info)
“Rash” is also available in Willesden Herald: New Short Stories 8 together with stories by nine other outstanding writers.
I’m pleased to announce that we will be featuring some of the great short stories from the Willesden Herald book series New Short Stories, to appear in the Story of the Month slot, by prior arrangement with the writers. Already three or four are lined up. Meanwhile you can browse the books, which are all still available, here.
Authors: If you had a story short-listed in any year of the competition and wouldn’t mind seeing it featured here, please let me know, as these will only be published with your permission. There’s a back-issue book awarded for each story contributed. (Ed.)
The Art of the Short Story: Tessa Hadley and Lucy Hughes-Hallett discuss with Mark Ford. Back by popular demand at the Queen’s Park Book Festival 29 June. Full programme here: https://t.co/8xyCtq3XOQ
#FourthEstateLtd @HarperCollinsUK @FaberBooks @JonathanCape @LucyHH pic.twitter.com/ySvntE0tst
— Queen’s Park Book Festival (@QPBookfest) May 14, 2019
‘When I started I thought I wasn’t a person with a good memory but you tap into uncanny places where you have things saved up that you didn’t know you did until you got to that level.’ Tessa Hadley in The Times (2017) via “How Tessa Hadley Writes“
“Picador has acquired a collection of short stories from “really exciting talent” Dima Alzayat. Editor Ansa Khan Khattak bought UK and Commonwealth rights for Alligator and Other Stories from Juliet Pickering at Blake Friedmann. It is scheduled for publication in 2020.” (The Bookseller)
On the May New Yorker Fiction Podcast, Emma Cline reads and discusses “The Metal Bowl” by Miranda July, from a 2017 issue of the magazine.
— New Yorker Fiction (@NYerFiction) May 1, 2019
Elena Ferrante’s Art of Fiction interview is free this week. Find out what else we’ve unlocked:
— The Paris Review (@parisreview) April 23, 2019
“Every week, the editors of The Paris Review lift the paywall on a selection of interviews, stories, poems, and more from the magazine’s archive. You can have these unlocked pieces delivered straight to your inbox every Sunday by signing up for the Redux newsletter.”
This week’s features include an interview with Elena Ferrante, a poem by Jorge Luis Borges and a story by Haruki Murakami.
