COMPETITION SHORTLIST: The THRESHOLDS International Short Fiction Feature Writing Competition is now in its seventh year – celebrating all that the short story form has to offer and awarding one deserving essayist the top prize of £500…
Over the past weeks, the team of THRESHOLDS judges has been busy reading and re-reading the entries, debating and deliberating. Now, we bring you the 2018 THRESHOLDS Features Award longlist.
ARMEL DAGORN reveals the cruelty within two poignant short stories, one French, one Irish: ‘Picture this: a man steps out, and maybe it’s a good day, and the stars, or traffic lights, align, and all the simple pleasures of a sweet summer morn are revealed to the purposeful flaneur.’
KATHLEEN H. STORY looks at Stephen Graham Jones’ dark tale of fatherly love, and asks how far would you go?: ‘Parents often say they would give their left arm or even their life to save their children. That they could kill anyone who tries to harm them. But would they really? This story will force you to question yourself.’
JULIA ANDERSON follows Stan, the unreliable young narrator of Joanna Campbell’s ‘Upshots’: ‘Campbell’s writing is known for its wry humour, and ‘Upshots’ is no exception as she gives Stan an engagingly naïve voice and many incisively observational one-liners… ‘
SHORT STORY ADAPTATIONS: this month, Dr. CHRIS MACHELL looks at decaying masculinity in John Cheever’s ‘The Swimmer’: ‘The Swimmer is as much as an attack on the self-involved counter-culturalism of Jack Kerouac and the Beat Generation as it is on self-satisfied wealthy suburbia…’
STEPHEN HARGADON finds subtlety, power and wit behind the familiar scenery in Elspeth Davie’s short story ‘Allergy’: ‘…there is a richness here, a resonance, an ability, keen and tender, to look at the world from odd angles, to see the extraordinary, the mystical, in the daily churn of human commerce…’
DORA D’AGOSTINO champions the little girl who refuses to be silenced in Grace Paley’s story ‘The Loudest Voice’: ‘Shirley Abramowitz, the grammar-school aged, spunky and unabashed main character of the story, now an adult, is recalling the first time she felt important, when everything and everyone conspired for her to be quiet and compliant.’
EMILY DEVANE looks at Alice Munro’s expansive short story ‘The Beggar Maid’ and sees within all the hallmarks of a novel in miniature: ‘Most remarkable, though, is the scope of the story, which takes us from the couple’s first meeting to a chance encounter many years later. Munro achieves novel-like resonance in short story form. It is a masterclass of technique.’
NICOLA DALY discusses the work of the English writer Elizabeth Taylor: ‘When you tell people that Elizabeth Taylor is one of your favourite short story writers they look upon you a little strangely. ‘
