Saturday, February 21, 2009

Jewish Book Week and Costa flash fiction

Today began the UK Jewish Book Week festivities for me and J with lunch at the director of JBW's lovely house, meeting her and a number of the authors who will be reading this coming week. I felt quite green, only having published one book, but everyone was lovely and we certainly weren't the only ones to have come from abroad. There were several authors who couldn't easily answer the question: So, where do you live? Now I've decided I too want several homes, one in Paris and another... well, open to suggestion! The event at which I am reading is tomorrow at 12.30, am quite nervous but also greatly looking forward to chatting about short stories.

Following on from the previous discussion here about all the places flash fiction could appear, J came back the other day with Frothy Tales, a collection of short shorts which he had bought from Costa, the coffee chain, when buying his coffee. Written by Costa-writer-in-residence Davey Spens, this is a little book of tales inspired by the people Davey saw in various Costa coffee branches! Of course, Costa is tied into writing already, being the awarders of the Costa Book Awards. But still - flash fiction up on the counter with your croissants and banana muffins is a wondrous thing! Any more ideas?

3 comments:

Lauri said...

On South African TV, lately they have performance poetry commercials. I've forgotten just now what they call it, something like The Living Word, but not exactly that. The poets themselves read and it is such a break between commercials.

I love the idea of flash fiction with your coffee. They could also put short shorts on serviettes- that could be fun.

Douglas Bruton said...

Posting this again, in case it was missed:

On those postcards that are given away free in cinema foyers... in holiday brochures to give people a flavour of the place... in Christmas crackers instead of those silly motto's or jokes... on the backs of cereal packets to read over breakfast (no unsavoury subject matter)... as bookmarks...

Should we approach Starbucks and see if they want to do something like Costa...? They might just be interested. What do you say?.. They could go for local writers, local to whichever branch? Or just go for new.

Thoughts?

D

Tania Hershman said...

Lauri, I love that idea, of performance poetry commercials. Totally great. And short shorts on serviettes, why not? Flash fiction on loo paper?

Douglas, your comment must have gone astray the first time. So many good ideas... Starbucks, hmm, do you have any contacts? We don't have Starbucks in Israel, I think you should try it. The Frothy Tales was, for me, less flash fiction and more like a sort of twist-in-the-tale joke, but entertaining nonetheless!

Maybe we should come up with a list and then divide it up between several of us and do a concerted blitz.