For Esmé—with Love and Squalor
An essay by WANDA CAMPBELL: ‘When I read ‘For Esmé–With Love and Squalor’, I did not know it was considered one of J.D. Salinger’s best stories, but I knew that I liked it.’
Author Profile: Ali Smith
EMMA YOUNG looks at the life and writing of Ali Smith: ‘It is Smith’s focus and attention to voice that marks her out as a unique writer…’
Story: May Malone by David Almond
STORY: Read DAVID ALMOND’s short story ‘May Malone’. Almond’s stories have appeared in numerous magazines, anthologies and illustrated books, and in two collections, Sleepless Nights and A Kind of Heaven, both published by IRON Press.
We Recommend: Slog’s Dad
Shortlisted for the THRESHOLDS Feature Writing Competition,CRAIG LAMONT recommends ‘Slog’s Dad’- a short story by David Almond.
Short Story Masterclass… with Sarah Hall
MASTERCLASS PODCAST: In the first of our Short Story Masterclass podcasts, Steve Wasserman talks to award-winning author Sarah Hall about killer stories and the sexiness of the short story form.
Pulling Words
Managing Editor and founder of Labello Press, DEBORAH McMENAMY, talks of their maiden anthology, Gem Street, and of pulling words instead of weeds.
More Than a Magician
‘More Than a Magician is one of those short stories which I found impossible to digest after just one bite…’ JULIET WEST looks at the work of contemporary Welsh writer Brian George.
Negotiating Cultural Collisions
JOSE VARGHESE recommends Rohinton Mistry’s ‘Squatter’: Its scatological references are intricately related to the plight of a Parsi immigrant in Canada, for whom the frequent necessity to invent imaginary homelands becomes a ‘pain in the posterior’.
A.E.Coppard’s ‘The Higgler’
MIKE SMITH discusses his attraction to A. E. Coppard’s short story ‘The Higgler’: ‘It was the word itself – higgler – that attracted me. I don’t recall ever having heard it spoken, or seen it used in any other context…’
Cartas de Mamá
BELLA WHITTINGTON recommends Julio Cortázar’s ‘Cartas de Mamá’ – ‘a subtle, precise and peculiarly believable story about a young Argentine couple living in Paris.’