This year's winner, the very modest Chris Beckett, read alongside last year's winner, Claire Keegan, last Sunday at the Bluecoat. Claire always has some interesting things to say about the short story, especially what she calls the 'reluctant voice'. She says Irish writers are good at short stories because the Irish talk a lot without saying anything.
See my account of the build-up to the Award Ceremony at http://theshortreview.blogspot.com/. What I don't tell you there is that a certain website accidentally leaked our embargoed press release the day before the winner was announced. It was gone by that evening, but word gets round very fast these days and possibly Chris was the only person in the room who knew that he'd won. That is a genuine look of bemusement on his face the following morning.
Picture: Tim Power
No comments:
Post a Comment