Wednesday 27 April 2011

Teaching the Short Story


Out now! With chapters by Charles E. May, Peter Wright, Michael Greaney, Paola Trimarco, Martin Scofield, Andy Sawyer, Linden Peach, Dean Baldwin and yours truly.




Alice Munro's biggest fan

From a piece by Diana Athill in the Telegraph today:

Not long ago, I was invited to open a literary festival in Toronto together with the Canadian writer Alice Munro, whose work I have loved and admired for years. Flying to Canada: what a nightmarish thought! My whole body seemed to recoil from it, because my legs have become so wobbly that walking more that about 50 yards is impossible, and even that much is frighteningly difficult when my deaf old head is being battered by the incomprehensible din of places such as airports, an experience so horrid that probably no undeaf person can imagine it.

No no, I couldn’t face it. But then I thought: “The chance to meet Alice Munro at last – how can I throw that away?”

Alice Munro will be 80 in July.







Friday 25 March 2011

Infinity

Thanks to Claire Massey for another short story metaphor from a blog post by Jeff VanderMeer
which talks about short stories being like baby sea turtles:

'Short stories (and novellas) endure a different fate, one more akin to the process by which sea turtles reproduce. Hundreds of eggs are laid
and eventually hundreds of baby turtles hatch and frantically make for the sea, many of them getting picked off by birds or crabs. Once they
reach the sea, even more get eaten by fish and other predators. Some run afoul of fishermen’s nets after they reach maturity. Short stories, by
dint of their initial appearance in magazines or anthologies, are more like sea turtles than ships. Some never make it out of the shell. Those that do frantically seek publication, but only a few make it that far. Of the ones that do, most are destined to be ignored and never heard from again. Only a handful make it all the way to some kind of prominence of recognition.'

The photo by Tim Power has nothing to do with turtles. It's the cover image for the new journal Short Fiction in Theory and Practice.