“Some of our great writers – from Elizabeth Strout to Mark Haddon – nominate what their favourite short story is, and tell us, in this intimate series, why they love it so much. You can watch the series here, with new choices every week”
Sunday Times Audible Short Story Award website
Author: Stephen Moran
I was born in Dublin and made my way to London on a bike in my mid-twenties. It’s where I can still be found though ever further out, most recently as far as Harrow. I no longer own a bicycle.
Index of Contributors
Announcement: We’ve added this index of all the contributors to the Willesden Herald short story book series and Story of the Month.
Counting. Over the past sixteen years, Willesden Herald has published 139 short stories by 113 writers from Bosnia, Canada, China, England, India, Nepal, New Zealand, Nigeria, Northern Ireland, Russia, Scotland, Singapore, South Africa, USA and Wales.
New Yorker: “The Resident Poet” by Katherine Dunn
(May 4) The story in this week’s issue, “The Resident Poet,” is a previously unpublished piece by Katherine Dunn, who died in 2016 and was the author of, among other things, the best-selling 1989 novel “Geek Love,” which follows a family of self-described “freaks” who operate and perform for a travelling circus.
Deborah Treisman
I’d read “Geek Love” three times…
Naomi Huffman
A previously unpublished story by the late Katherine Dunn. It’s a road trip, starts in a car park in the night rain, we go places, the resident poet is excoriated, sordid things happen, ends back in the night car park with a reflection in glass. What’s not to like? (Ed.)
Sunday Times Audible Short Story Award 2020 result
Caine Prize for African Writing 2020 – Short List
The Caine Prize for African Writing is one of the world’s major short story prizes. The prize is for a published short story, between 3,000 and 10,000 words, by an African writer.
Bookriot
Story of the Month, July 2020
For the next in our 2020 lockdown series, we revisit the joint-winner of our inaugural short story competition. Some of you may be running around without face or leg coverings for the allowed daily exercise but it's not compulsory, you know. Happily, we can still stay home and read short stories. (Ed)
The Willesden Herald Short Story of the Month
July 2020: Dodie’s Gift by Vanessa Gebbie
“Later, in The Tinners, they sit together in Dodie’s corner on sagging burgundy plush cushions. He has bought her a cider, he drinks beer from the bottle. They talk. Dodie is half listening, looking at the scratches through the varnish on the table…”
Novelist, short story writer, poet, Vanessa Gebbie has won awards for both poetry and prose, including the Troubadour International Poetry Prize, a Bridport short story prize and a much-coveted Willesden Herald short story prize. Author of ten various books, her novel The Coward’s Tale (Bloomsbury) was a Financial Times novel of the year, and her debut poetry pamphlet was selected by the TLS as one of the best of its year. She is commissioning and contributing editor of Short Circuit, Guide to the Art of the Short Story, editions 1 and 2 (Salt). She teaches widely. www.vanessagebbie.com
The author of “Dodie’s Gift” cares about character. It is a beautiful piece about two people circling each other, wondering whether to make contact.
Zadie Smith (Judge’s report – Willesden short story prize 2006)
Dodie’s Gift was first published in Words from a Glass Bubble, Salt Publishing, 2008
Story of the Month, June 2020
In the second of our 2020 lockdown series, you are the writer. Have you ever missed a step on the stairs or turned back in fear? Have you ever given someone a piece of your mind? Are you an object of desire or the subject? Stay home. Ed.
The Willesden Herald Short Story of the Month
June 2020: Imagine that this Page is Empty by Nick Holdstock
“As Richard tends the first patient of the evening – a young woman with black eye make-up and an arm wound – he thinks of the pills, safe in their bottle, doubly safe in his jacket, safer still in his locker. The arm wound is self-inflicted. It is too precise.”
Nick Holdstock is the author of The Casualties, a novel, and several books about China.
“Imagine that this Page is Empty” is from his collection, The False River (Unthank Books, 2019).
Society of Authors awards shortlists 2020
It is gratifying to see two former Willesden Herald New Short Stories contributors, namely Carol Farrelly and Diana Powell, short-listed for this year’s ALCS Tom Gallon award for a short story.
Story of the Month, May 2020
Looking for respite from the lockdown?
You’ve come to the right place.
Ed.
The Willesden Herald Short Story of the Month
May 2020: The Time Capsule by John O’Donoghue
“They all fell silent for a moment. I could see them trying to look into the future, to imagine themselves as adults, married maybe, perhaps with families of their own, working away in jobs like Uncle Tommy in the Post Office, or Auntie Lizzie in the nursing before she was married, or gone to England, like my mother and father, or even further afield.”
John O’Donoghue is the author of Letter To Lord Rochester (Waterloo Press, 2004), The Beach Generation (Pighog Press, 2007), Brunch Poems (Waterloo Press, 2009), Sectioned: A Life Interrupted (John Murray, 2009), Fools & Mad (Waterloo Press, 2014), and The King From Over the Water (The Wild Geese Press, 2019). Sectioned was awarded Mind Book of the Year in 2010. His journalism, essays, and reviews have been published in The Observer, The Guardian, The Times Educational Supplement, The London Magazine, PN Review, Acumen, and Orbis. He lives in Brighton and teaches Creative Writing at the Brighton Writers’ Centre.
The Time Capsule comes from The King from Over The Water (The Wild Geese Press, 2019).
