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#40: In The Fall By Alistair MacLeod - By Lucy Treloar
When Alistair MacLeod died on Easter morning this year three days after the death of the better-known Gabriel Garcia Marquez the event went relatively unremarked. I had loved his only (wonderful) novel No Great Mischief, and over the next couple of weeks I read my way through his small, beautiful body of short stories...
5 Things You Didn't Know About Sean Ennis
1. His story 'Going After Lovely', which opens Chase Us, was originally published in Best New American Voices, edited by Jane Smiley. When reviewing the collection, Kirkus said that "Impressive craftsmanship and high imaginative quality distinguish an annual that’s becoming an essential..."
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...
#39: Runaway by Alice Munro - by Belinda Rule
In a writing class, I was once given an exercise of analysing sentence rhythm by replacing all the nouns and verbs in the opening sentence of a favourite story with different ones. But I had brought in Alice Munro’s ‘Runaway’, and I felt an almost violent aversion to doing it...
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.
#38: TONY TAKITANI BY HARUKI MURAKAMI – BY J.Y.L. KOH
In the mid-80s, Murakami and his wife were driving around Maui when they stopped at a thrift shop. While browsing, they found a yellow promotional t-shirt with the name Tony Takitani printed across the chest in black letters. Murakami bought the t-shirt for a dollar. When he returned to Tokyo, he began wearing it out and about, all the while wondering who Tony Takitani was and what he did for living. Murakami felt compelled to imagine a life for the man behind the name and that is how he came to write one of my favourite short stories.
#37: Hills Like White Elephants by Ernest Hemingway - by Luke Thomas
Ernest Hemingway has endured. For almost one hundred years his writing has been praised, imitated, mocked, dismissed, rediscovered, and praised again. Love or hate him – apparently, there’s no other option – Hemingway’s influence on modern literature is undeniable. So large looms his shadow that it takes a brave writer to attempt a simple and direct style, to construct a novel or a story with modest vocabulary, terse description and clipped dialogue.
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...
5 Things You Didn't Know About Miranda July
1. Her story 'Roy Spivey' is about a girl who meets a famous actor on a plane. Since the story's publication in The New Yorker, any number of theories have been suggested as to the real life identity of 'Roy' (most notably at Perpetual Folly in a comments section active since 2007). To date, none have been verified, if indeed there is a real life counterpart. You can listen to the story here, and make up your own mind as to whether 'Roy Spivey' is great fiction, clever semi-autobiography or a mix of the two...
5 Things You Didn't Know About J.D. Salinger
1. He donated his unpublished story ‘The Ocean Full of Bowling Balls’, written in 1947, to the Princeton library in 2010. The story is about the death of Kenneth Caulfield and contains the ‘greatest letter home from camp ever composed by man or boy’. This letter is sent from The Catcher in the Rye protagonist Holden Caulfield to his younger brother, Kenneth, who becomes ‘Allie’ in said novel...
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...