World Book Day: Competition to Collaboration
Carolyn Thomas, a tutor in creative writing for the Open University, writes about her engagement with writing competitions and the one that led to a rather unique collaboration!
Favourite Stories for World Book Day
In celebration of World Book Day, our contributors give us a taste of their favourite stories. Readers are invited to leave a comment, telling us about their own favourites in 5 lines or less.
A Single Word
Mike Smith ponders the essence of a short story by reducing it to a single key word or phrase.
Tania Hershman – Live Q and A
Tania has now left the building! Thank you everyone for an excellent evening!
My True Love
Pauline Masurel has a love affair with words.
Finding a Happy Place: Contented Characters
Tess St Clair-Ford asks whether happy characters can be interesting, and if the lack of conflict in contentment makes them off-limits for the short story writer.
The Journey
Mike Smith takes us on a journey to explore the process of writing.
Raymond Carver’s ‘Why Don’t You Dance?’
Will Bowerman continues the exploration into the work of Raymond Carver and the illusion of the final version…
Author Profile – Erskine Caldwell
By his death in 1987, Erskine Caldwell had published twenty-five novels, nearly one-hundred-and-fifty short stories and twelve volumes of non-fiction. Ellie Piddington looks at why his work is often excluded from the Southern literary canon.
We Recommend – Pulse
Soumya Bhattacharya reviews Julian Barnes’s long-awaited third story collection, PULSE, and finds it beating with the rhythms of life.