7th - 9th June 2013 - IN HEART AND MIND - Storytelling workshop

In Heart and Mind is an introductory storytelling course for adults who are working with or caring for children with Danyah Miller, and with support from Eka Morgan.

This Introductory Storytelling Weekend is for all those involved with children 5-11 years old (Primary school). During the weekend we will participate in a range of interactive storytelling activities, giving you the opportunity to learn and enhance your storytelling skills. No previous storytelling experience is needed, just an open heart and an inquiring mind!

FOR MORE DETAILS OR TO BOOK PLEASE VISIT THE INTERNATIONAL SCHOOL OF STORYTELLING WEBSITE OR FOLLOW THE LINK BELOW http://goo.gl/4YPjO

VS Pritchett Memorial Prize - submissions now open

Submissions are now open for a prestigious short story competition, with a deadline of 13th June 2013.

The V.S. Pritchett Memorial Prize, run by The Royal Society of Literature, is awarded to the best unpublished short story of the year, and the winner receives £1,000. The winning submission is published in Prospect online and the RSL Review, the annual magazine of The Royal Society of Literature. The winner is also invited to read their story at a special award event in November, at which an established short story writer also reads from their own work.

The judges this year are Helen Simpson, recent Granta Best of Young British writer Adam Foulds, and Jackie Kay.

Enter the competition

Entrants must be citizens of the UK or the Republic of Ireland, or have been resident for the past three years. Stories entered for the competition must not have been published previously, or broadcast in any other medium. Full competition terms and an entry for can be found on The Royal Society of Literature's website.

Any queries about the competition can be sent to Molly Rosenberg, Communications Manager at the RSL. Email Molly (at) rslit.org

Herefordshire and Wye Valley Life short story comp winners

Winners of the Short Story Competition run in National Short Story Week, November 2012, have now been published in the March edition of Herefordshire and Wye Valley Life. The standard of entries was excellent and we had a difficult time deciding on the winners. We had a shortlist of 9 from which we selected the top three.

 

Helping to run and judge the competition was a privilege and great fun. Reading the stories, which were both varied and entertaining, was an added bonus.  

 

The winner, Rainbow Ride by Jennifer Holland is a lovely story set in Herefordshire. Judges comment:

 

‘Rainbow Ride captures the reader in the first paragraph. The child's voice is authentic and the characters skilfully portrayed. The comparison between God and Mr Hope in the child's mind is beautifully interwoven throughout. The dialogue, particularly in the playground scene, is realistic. This is a warm, believable story that left me with a smile on my face.'

 

2^nd place: Ancient and Modern by Arianne Forrester

‘Well written, a story that the reader can relate to, with an endearing ending.’

 

3^rd place: Following the Hunt by Campbell Page

‘Excellent Herefordshire dialogue; it captures a true picture of the old-timers that follow the hunt.’

 

All three stories can be read on the magazine’s website: www.herefordshire.greatbritishlife.co.uk

Fay Wentworth
http://faywentworth.wordpress.com 

Short story cabaret in Hertfordshire

The Kings Arms in Berkhamsted, Hertfordshire is hosting another entertaining evening of storytelling on  Wednesday 6th March 2013 (7pm for 7.45pm).

Following the sell-out success of the first Berko Speakeasy last November, the evening's theme is "Robots and Tigers and Ghosts - Oh My!". A talented company of professional actors including Elizabeth Bower and Keith Drinkel will be reading stories by celebrated US writer Rajesh Parameswaran, Toby Litt, Carys Davies, Mike Scott Thompson and classic French writer Guy de Maupassant.

 

Tickets are now on sale from the Kings Arms, Waterstones (Berkhamsted branch) or online. 

The Berko Speakeasy, The Greene Room,147 High Street,Berkhamsted, Hertfordshire HP4 3HL.

Black Vodka by Deborah Levy

About the collection
From 2012 Man Booker Prize and BBC International Short Story Award 2012 shortlisted Deborah Levy

How does love change us? And how do we change ourselves for love – or for lack of it? Ten stories by acclaimed author Deborah Levy explore these delicate, impossible questions. From glossy ad-land to swans with a sinister sleeping sickness, from London gardens to a forest outside Prague, these are twenty-first century lives dissected with razor-sharp humour and curiosity, about what it means to live and love, together and alone.

http://www.andotherstories.org/book/black-vodka/

About the author
Deborah Levy’s most recent novel, Swimming Home (2011, And Other Stories) was shortlisted for the 2012 Man Booker Prize. Her work has been staged by the Royal Shakespeare Company, and she is the author of other highly praised books including Beautiful Mutants, Swallowing Geography and Billy and Girl.

What they are saying about Black Vodka
‘Deborah Levy has made something strange and new . . . spiky and unsettling.’ John Self, Guardian

‘Deborah Levy’s storytelling is allusive, elliptical and disturbing. Her touch is gentle, often funny and always acute. This is a prizewinner.’ Julia Pascal, Independent

‘A statement on the power of the unsaid. Magisterial . . . Themes, phrases and images recur in rhythmic cycles through this fugal novel. Levy’s cinematic clarity and momentum convey confusion with remarkable lucidity.’ Abigail Deutsch, Times Literary Supplement

Tenth of December by George Saunders

About the collection
From the undisputed master of the short story, George Saunders, comes a dazzling and disturbing new collection. His most wryly hilarious work to date, Tenth of December illuminates human experience and explores figures lost in a labyrinth of troubling preoccupations.

A family member recollects a backyard pole dressed for all occasions; Divisional Director Todd Birnie sends round a memo to employees he thinks need some inspiration; Jeff faces horrifying ultimatums and the prospect of Darkenfloxx™ in some unusual drug trials; and in an auction of local celebrities Al Roosten hides his own internal monologue behind a winning smile that he hopes will make him popular. Although, as a young boy discovers, sometimes the voices fade and all you are left with is a frozen hill on a cold day in December...

With dark visions of the future riffing against ghosts of the past and the ever-settling present, Tenth of December sings with astonishing charm and intensity, and re-affirms Saunders as one of our greatest living storytellers.

About the author
At one point a geophysical engineer, MacArthur Fellowship winner George Saunders is an acclaimed writer of short stories, essays, novellas and children's books. His work includes the story collections CivilWarLand in Bad Decline, a finalist for the 2006 PEN/Hemingway Award, Pastoralia and In Persuasion Nation, one of only three finalists for The Story Prize in 2006. He has also won prizes for his bestselling children's book The Very Persistent Gappers of Frip and has, most recently, written a book of essays entitled The Brain-Dead Megaphone. He currently teaches Creative Writing at Syracuse University, New York, and writes regularly for GQ, Harper's and The New Yorker, who in 2002 named him one of the 'Best Writers Under 40'. He lives in New York with his family.

What they are saying about Tenth of December
‘A joyous, mad, brilliant, laugh-out-loud box of tricks from one of America's most daring writers. Delicious, delicious, delicious. I could read Saunders forever’ Liz Jensen

‘Not since Twain has America produced a satirist this funny with a prose style this fine. Saunders is a morally passionate, serious writer, who perfectly expresses the madness of the times we live in. He will be read long after these times have passed’ Zadie Smith

‘Again and again, Saunders demonstrates that wacky, subversive, formally strange writing is not only not contrary to our nation's capitalist spirit, it's the most natural and effective of responses to it. He makes the all-but-impossible look effortless. We're lucky to have him’ Jonathan Franzen

‘Saunders reads like Barthelme or Coover, and can be funnier than either’ Hari Kunzru, Guardian Books of the Year

This Isn't The Sort Of Thing That Happens To Someone Like You by Jon McGregor

About the collection
An astonishing collection of work by one of Britain's finest contemporary writers.

A man builds a tree house by a river, in anticipation of the coming flood. A sugar-beet crashes through a young woman's windscreen. A boy sets fire to a barn. These aren't the sort of things you imagine happening to someone like you. But sometimes they do. Set in the flat and threatened fenland landscape, where the sky is dominant and the sea lurks just beyond the horizon, these delicate, dangerous, and sometimes deeply funny stories tell of things buried and unearthed, of familiar places made strange, and of lives where much is hidden, much is at risk, and tender moments are hard-won.

About the author
Jon McGregor is the author of the critically acclaimed If Nobody Speaks of Remarkable Things, So Many Ways to Begin and Even the Dogs. He is the winner of the Betty Trask Prize and the Somerset Maugham Award, and has been twice longlisted for the Man Booker Prize. He was runner-up for the BBC National Short Story Award in both 2010 and 2011, with 'If It Keeps on Raining' and 'Wires' respectively. He was born in Bermuda in 1976. He grew up in Norfolk and now lives in Nottingham. @jon_mcgregor

What they are saying about This Isn't The Sort Of Thing That Happens To Someone Like You
McGregor is the nearest thing you will ever come across to a literary Beethoven. Words go beyond being tools of his trade and become an orchestrated, inspired and precisely designed tone poem for each creative idea ... One of the most perfect pieces of written English I have ever come across’ Sunday Express

‘Set in and around the fens, these wickedly brilliant stories are as black as the local soil ... Throughout, omissions and ellipses set the mind racing like a treacherous tide, rushing in to fill the gaps. Not a book for bedtime, then. But very, very good indeed’ Daily Mail

‘To the anxious literary festival audience member - and anyone else feeling downcast about the state of the short story today - I say, read Jon McGregor's new book. Its verve, its inventiveness, its sheer quiet audacity will reassure you that the short story is alive, well and reaching new heights’ Guardian

‘Sharp, dark and hugely entertaining, this collection establishes McGregor as one of the most exciting voices in short fiction’ Observer