This week is National Short Story Week in the UK.
Go to our website for lots of resources to help you celebrate the week.
Thousands of year 7 and 8 school children around the country are writing short stories this week as part of our Young Writer competition to celebrate National Short Story Week. You can see more details in this week's issue of children's newspaper First News.
Tuesday, 8 November 2011
Writing Children's Fiction
In this edition of The Write Lines, Sue Cook talks to Joe Craig (Jimmy Coates series), Jon Mayhew (The Demon Collector), Tamsyn Murray (My So-Called Haunting)and Chris Priestley (Mr Creecher) about writing fiction for children.
Essential listening for anyone who would like to write for children.
Essential listening for anyone who would like to write for children.
Writing short stories for women's magazines
If you have ever thought about writing short stories for the women's magazine market this edition of The Write Lines with Sue Cook is essential listening. Sue talks to three experts in the field, Rowan Coleman (Lessons in Laughing Out Loud), Sophie King (The School Run)and Sue Moorcroft (Love and Freedom).
There are lots of great tips such as how to find inspiration for stories, how to submit your work and even what not to call your hero and heroine!
There are lots of great tips such as how to find inspiration for stories, how to submit your work and even what not to call your hero and heroine!
Writing Tips
We are delighted to bring you three special online versions of Sue Cook's radio programme about writing and writers: The Write Lines.
Programme 1 is all about short stories and below you can hear Sue talking to Nicholas Royle (editor, Best British Short Stories 2011, Salt Publishing), Emily Bullock (winner, Bristol Short Story Prize), Stuart Evers (10 Stories About Smoking, Picador), Linda Leatherbarrow (Essential Kit), Helen Oyeyemi (Mr Fox, Picador) and Jonathan Pinnock (winner, Scott Prize 2011):
Programme 1 is all about short stories and below you can hear Sue talking to Nicholas Royle (editor, Best British Short Stories 2011, Salt Publishing), Emily Bullock (winner, Bristol Short Story Prize), Stuart Evers (10 Stories About Smoking, Picador), Linda Leatherbarrow (Essential Kit), Helen Oyeyemi (Mr Fox, Picador) and Jonathan Pinnock (winner, Scott Prize 2011):
Essential Kit by Linda Leatherbarrow
In these varied and exquisite short stories, Linda Leatherbarrow brings together for the first time her prize-winning short prose with new and previously unpublished work. A wide-ranging, rich and surprising gallery of characters includes a nineteen-year-old girl leaving home, a talking gorilla in the swinging sixties, a shoe fetishist and a long-distance walker. The prose is lyrical, witty and uplifting, funny and moving, always pertinent – proving that the short story is the perfect literary form for contemporary urban life. Essential reading for short-story lovers everywhere.
'Full of acute observation, surprising imagery... joyously surreal, gnomically funny, and touching' - Shena Mackay
'I couldn't put this collection down. Hoorah for the vibrant short story - here it is, in all its magnificance' - Julia Darling
The Fiction Desk Volume 2
The second volume in this exciting new series of short story anthologies, presenting the best new short fiction from British and international authors.
Among the stories: a new dress code causes havoc in an American school, a newspaper mistake leads a retired comedian to look back over a not-quite-spotless career, and a family buys an unusual addition to their fish tank. This volume also features 'Pretty Vacant', a special long story from Charles Lambert.
More about The Fiction Desk
Paperback, 176 pages
Edited by Rob Redman
Published 30 September 2011
ISBN 978-0-9567843-2-2
A Little Aloud edited by Angela Macmillan
Inspired by the Get Into Reading sessions and edited by Angela Macmillan, A Little, Aloud is an anthology of prose and poetry for reading aloud to someone that you care for. All proceeds from the book go directly to support the outreach work of the Reader Organisation.
Stories are made to be shared; the telling and sharing of stories with others is woven into the fabric of our everyday lives. Most of us will remember being tucked up with a bedtime story as a staple of our childhood, and how rewarding but more importantly, how comforting it was. Why should we miss out on that pleasure as an adult?
A Little, Aloud (Chatto & Windus, 2010) provides a selection of carefully selected literature designed especially to be read aloud to someone you care for, a partner, child, sick or elderly relative. All the chosen texts in the anthology – edited by Angela Macmillan – have been tried and tested by trained facilitators in Get Into Reading groups and offer something to delight everyone; from Shakespeare to Seamus Heaney, Black Beauty to Madame Bovary. Arranged into small sections that cover a range of topics and themes, each is supplemented by reading notes which recall the conversations, observations and anecdotes of Get Into Reading group members. These personal responses to pieces of literature, show just how deeply and powerfully the act of reading can resonate with us all.
Buy A Little, Aloud directly from The Reader.
South to that Dark Sun by Gareth Owen
This collection of eleven stories provides a voice for many different worlds and characters: from the naive but beautiful Italian woman and her erotic obsession with religion and dentistry,to the Rock/Blues singer damaged by drugs and alcohol, whose moment in the sun has passed, and who falls under the spell of the honey-voiced Mississipi Southern Belle of his satnav. 
One evening, whilst suffering from writers' block, Gareth Owen recalled an anecdote related by his Italian teacher and mentally transformed himself into an Italian woman, and the result was Zia Teresa: the tale of the rather dim small-town beauty and her erotic obsessions.
There are ten further stories many with male protagonists and English settings: the
chilling ghost story of the aborted child, the narcissistic actor and his breakdown on stage; the confessions of the serial philanderer.
Gareth sings in the guise of Country singer, Virg Clenthill, and has received an abundance of positive press,including being described in The Times as "a torrent of jovial mockery… hard to beat for intelligent high spirits."
Praise for Gareth's previous work:
"Both grips and stretches the imagination." Times Literary Supplement
About the Author:
Gareth Owen is a prize-winning poet. For a number of years he presented the BBC's long-running Poetry Please! He has published five collections of verse, as well as five novels and books for children. He has also written numerous plays, four of which were broadcast by the BBC.
PUBLISHED 2nd August 2010
£8.00
ISBN 9781848763944
Distributor: Troubador Publishing Ltd, 5 Weir Road, Kibworth Beauchamp, Leicester, LE8 0LQ, UK
Paperback 300PP 198x127 mm Portrait
One evening, whilst suffering from writers' block, Gareth Owen recalled an anecdote related by his Italian teacher and mentally transformed himself into an Italian woman, and the result was Zia Teresa: the tale of the rather dim small-town beauty and her erotic obsessions.
There are ten further stories many with male protagonists and English settings: the
chilling ghost story of the aborted child, the narcissistic actor and his breakdown on stage; the confessions of the serial philanderer.
Gareth sings in the guise of Country singer, Virg Clenthill, and has received an abundance of positive press,including being described in The Times as "a torrent of jovial mockery… hard to beat for intelligent high spirits."
Praise for Gareth's previous work:
"Both grips and stretches the imagination." Times Literary Supplement
About the Author:
Gareth Owen is a prize-winning poet. For a number of years he presented the BBC's long-running Poetry Please! He has published five collections of verse, as well as five novels and books for children. He has also written numerous plays, four of which were broadcast by the BBC.
PUBLISHED 2nd August 2010
£8.00
ISBN 9781848763944
Distributor: Troubador Publishing Ltd, 5 Weir Road, Kibworth Beauchamp, Leicester, LE8 0LQ, UK
Paperback 300PP 198x127 mm Portrait
Thirteen Months to Christmas by Alison Leonard
Thirteen Months To Christmas is a collection of thirteen short stories: one for Christmas, one for each month of the year and the final one for the following Christmas. In this fun and festive gift book, you can find the ghost of a lover's great-aunt in a wardrobe, curl up with Killer Ken in his winter garden, or listen to Catriona heralding disaster over the airwaves. How about picking up a strange old lady from the airport, as Jasmine does, and finding she tells you the meaning of your life? Another month, you'll meet a hideous but magical boy beside a sun-drenched river; next, you'll discover you're pregnant by a man in a draughty teepee. You can wash your mother's hair in the deep south while dreaming of murder, cower in rural Sudan terrified by Ronald Reagan, or find that Death stops you getting to the seaside at Scarborough.
Praise for Alison's short stories:
"Stories which work best are those with pace and movement. Alison Leonard's sped along".Jackie Kay, poet,on Alison's story "Coach Fare to Scarborough" in MsLexia.
"A perfect gem of a piece." Robert Colman, poet, on Alison's short story "The Bonesetter's Nephew."
About the Author: Alison Leonard's fiction, drama and poetry for adults and children have been published, performed and broadcast in Britain, Ireland, Germany, Australia and the United States.
PUBLISHED 01 November 2011
£8.50 pb/£5.99 eBook
ISBN 9781848767683 pb/9781848768338 eBook
Distributor: Troubador Publishing Ltd, 5 Weir Road, Kibworth Beauchamp, Leicester, LE8 0LQ, UK
Paperback 120PP 198x127 mm Portrait
Silent Bombs Falling on Green Grass by Russell Mardell
Silent Bombs Falling On Green Grass is an intriguing collection of stories. It spans a wide selection of genres, from comedy to the surreal, to horror and drama. Written in a way that plays with structure and expectations it presents an unpredictable world where the reader is never quite sure how the story will unfold.
Instead of presenting each story in isolation, Russell makes the fictitious setting, Mewlish Lull, the sort of town you pass through on your way to somewhere else without even noticing the protagonist itself. He overlaps characters and incidents, leaving the reader to glean more from each story when the collection is read as a whole.
Russell has worked in independent film and fringe theatre for ten years. Trained in film production, he has written and produced two films, which has led to his current work as a playwright. Russell has written and occasionally directed five plays, which have been performed in theatres in London, Manchester and Salisbury.
PUBLISHED 1st December 2010
£7.99
ISBN 9781848765139 (paperback) / 9781848769779 (ebook)
Distributor: Orca Book Services. Tel: 01235 465521. Email: tradeorders@orcabookservices.co.uk
BIC subject category : FYB Short Stories
Paperback 256PP 203x127 mm Portrait
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)