Carys Davies – New Short Stories

Notes on Craft | Carys Davies | Granta

Trial and error – I don’t know of any other way to write. I try something this way and I try it that way, over and over and over.

Which brings me back to the notion of tentativeness – to doubt and uncertainty and to the exhilarating openness which comes with that, to whatever might come along.

Another twice contributor to Willesden Herald New Short Stories is Carys Davies, whose short stories are wonderfully imaginative, funny and engrossing. Two of the stories in her Frank O’Connor Prize-winning collection The Redemption of Galen Pike are also found in our New Short Stories 3 and New Short Stories 4. Her latest book is West, a novel, published by Granta Books, April 2018.

via Notes on Craft | Carys Davies | Granta

The story so far

We are thrilled and honoured to announce that David Means has kindly agreed to be the judge for the eighth annual Willesden Herald international short story competition.

David Means’ stories have a diamond-like sharpness and clarity, in which we visit locations, society and climates as vividly as in a waking dream. I couldn’t point to Sault Ste Marie on the map but I feel I’ve been there. I’ve never hung onto a train but I sort of know what it’s like now. I’ve never lived in an apartment in New York or slept rough but…you get the picture? Writers, you have your work cut out for you.

Links

Wikipedia: David Means
The Spot by David Means review by James Lasdun in the Guardian
Interview with David Means in the New York Times
Short stories by David Means in The New Yorker
NY podcast: David Means reads Chef’s House by Raymond Carver
David Means’ author page at Faber and Faber

So intercept a story when it stops at traffic lights, shine its windscreen with a piece of tissue paper the size of a coin, run home, type it out and send it to us as soon as electronically possible. Or whatever your process is. Closing date: Friday, 21 December 2012.

Continue reading “The story so far”

Willesden Herald: New Short Stories 4

Wena Poon – The Architects
Toby Litt – Veronika and Roger-Roger
Julia Goubert – In the Land of Flies
Willie Davis – Emily Strabnow’s Freckles
Nuala Ní Chonchúir – Letters
Kevin Spaide – Monkey Hat
Carys Davies – Precious
Jonathan Attrill – Love and Longing in the Marvellous City
Peggy Riley – Pearl
Tom Vowler – Busy. Come. Wait.
Paul McGuire – Hope Street
Jo Cannon – Shutters
Jarred McGinnis – Learning Stick
Henrietta Rose-Innes – Falling

Fourteen of the best short stories of the year 2010 from brilliant new and award-winning authors, seven by men and seven by women. The stories are set in Australia, Ireland, Russia, Singapore, South Africa, UK, US and more.

Available from

isbn: 978-0977852659

Contributors (2010)

Willesden Herald: New Short Stories 3

“Work” by Jo Lloyd
“The Travellers” by Carys Davies
“Tokyo Chocolate” by Morowa Yejidé
“Amy” by Nick Holdstock
“Ebb Tide” by Margot Taylor
“Ante-Purgatory” by Carol Farrelly
“The Imperfect Roundness of Things” by Claudia Boers
“Propitiation” by Jenny Barden
“Mina and Fina and Lotte Wattimena” by Jill Widner
“The Hate Club” by Ben Cheetham

“A while back, when I was going through a bit of a tough time, this guy I knew, Paul, bought himself a restaurant, and when it was still pretty new and he’d spent all his money on forks and skewers and real people who knew how to run a restaurant, he asked if I would help out, and I said yes because I didn’t have a job and I didn’t seem to be capable of getting a job and I didn’t have a clue how to get myself out of the hole I’d fallen into.” (The opening sentence of Work by Jo Lloyd).