Disclaimer: Some, all or none of the below may or may not be fact or fiction. Or both. Phil Latham takes no responsibility for anyone believing what he says to be true or helpful or entertaining. Ever. No dead people were excavated during the creation of this blog.
Mike Smith ponders the troublesome issue of titles and considers the multiple roles they have to play within a story.
Félix Fénéon (1861-1944) was an anarchist, publisher of Joyce, translator of Jane Austen’s Northanger Abbey into French, editor of avant-garde journals, coiner of the term ‘neo-impressionism’, possible bomb-maker, and a writer whose credo was ‘I aspire only to silence’. Bejamin Noys tells us more about this enigmatic writer…
There’s been a fascinating discussion in the British broadsheets recently over the use of the present tense in fiction. The author Philip Hensher complained that writers are ‘following fashion blindly’…
Anton Chekov once described reading a short story as ‘rather like drinking a glass of vodka’. It should be quick and sharp and hit you with a kind of shock that makes you see the world in a new way…
Three of my favourite ‘gags’ come from classic British sitcoms, and if you don’t already know them, I’m going to spoil them for you.
To mark the first annual National Short Story Week, which took place 22-28th November, nine of the UK’s premier short story writers were invited to work together to produce a single short story.
Pauline Masurel says…Own up! How many of you turn first to the biographical notes when handed a new anthology? It’s a terrible confession to make but sometimes I find I’m more curious about who I’m reading than what I’m reading.
Lachenmann told us how his work is all about structure, and really not about emotion or beauty. When Bach wrote his two part inventions, he was concerned with structure and nothing else, said Lachenmann. Yes, I thought, this relates well to short story writing. But do I believe him?
Paul Curd writes: In his first book since the pitch-perfect Brooklyn, Colm Toibin once more examines the great Irish theme of exile and homecoming in his new collection of short stories, The Empty Family.
