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FEBRUARY WRITING WORKSHOPS AND MASTERCLASSES
I'm running short story workshops and masterclasses for The Perth Writers Festival and The Katharine Susannah Prichard Foundation in February, 2015, as listed below. Both workshops deliver skills that can be immediately applied to your work, and in many cases, result in more dynamic, natural fiction that's willing to take educated risks in the pursuit of literary excellence...
Thank you
I was lucky enough to have recently had my story 'Orbiting' read on BBC Radio 4 as part of their Stories from the Southern Cross series. Success like this comes occasionally from luck, but more often from hard work, and not just mine. In that respect, I'm indebted to friends, colleagues and fellow professionals, all of whom helped either take Orbiting to a necessarily high standard or, in the case of Alex Adsett, could read a contract without going cross-eyed...
5 Things You Didn’t Know About Richard Yates - by Ryan O'Neill
1. Despite writing two excellent short story collections which included several stories now acknowledged to be classics, Yates, to his eternal chagrin, never had a story accepted by The New Yorker while he was alive. Apparently the magazine objected to his ‘mean-spirited view of things.’ One story ‘The Canal’ was belatedly published years after his death.
5 Things You Didn't Know About Junot Diaz
1. Diaz published his first collection of short fiction, Drown in 1996, but didn't publish his next work until 2007. That book, The Brief and Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, would eventually go on to win the 2008 Pulitzer Prize.
What am I Writing?
I’ve been invited to participate in a Writing Process Blog Chain where writers who blog describe their current writing process by responding to a standard questionnaire. Lee Kofman was kind enough to tag me on her turn. For those not in the know, Lee is a fearless writer, teacher, mentor and lovely person who has written three books of fiction in Hebrew, and numerous essays and articles. In all of this, she shows a knack for opening up meaning within her topics. As a reader, it's as if you've been shot in the arm with authenticity, sincerity, and a dash of eloquence. If you want to find out more about Lee, visit her blog, The Writing Life...
The Knife Shines
I'm excited to announce that my short story 'The Knife' (first published in Westerly 57:2) has won The 2013 Patricia Hackett Prize. This prize is selected annually for the best creative work published in Westerly in any particular year. This year, I'm lucky enough to have been selected. Quite an honour, given the list of contributors for 2012...
#36: The Scarlatti Tilt by Richard Brautigan
Richard Brautigan was a novelist, poet and short story writer in the 1960's and 70's. Depending on who you talk to, his work was beautiful or depressing, funny or tragic, and perhaps both at the same time. Opinions being opinions, I won't bore you with mine, but to say that at his best, he wrote some of the most stunningly beautiful fiction I've ever read...
#35: Where We Must Be by Laura van den Berg
While it's important to honour the classics of short fiction as truly great stories, I feel it's equally important to place modern writers within such a context. It's all too easy to suggest that today's writers struggle to compare without fully evaluating their experimentation with style, topic, and structure...
#34: My Father's Axe by Tim Winton
It’s easy to neglect the Australian short fiction that's shone in the past thirty years. Were one to revisit the classics, they'd find writers such as Moorhouse, Jolley, Carey, Goldsworthy, Kennedy, Tuner-Hospital, Hitchcock, and Robert Drewe, all of whom have experimented with the form to great effect. Unless they’ve been living in a commune, they’d also consider Tim Winton and his incredible talent for writing powerful, succinct short fiction...
The Best Short Stories and Collections of 2010: Part Two
Just in case you didn't get your dose of short fiction magic on Wednesday, I now present part two of 2010's best short stories and collections. The stories are different (although Wayne Macauley rates a second mention) and so are the experts...aside from that, the same magic pervades throughout. More to read, more to savour...