Reviews and other news

First, one of the fictions from My Mother Was An Upright Piano, Manoeuvres (which I can never spell!) is included in a new echapbook anthology, "Found" from Wordrunner, alongside authors Susan Meyers, Tania Hershman, Mary McCluskey, Jeff Haas, and Lucille Shulklapper and poets Sara Toruno-Conley, Angela Corbet, Bianca Diaz and Victor Perez.Read it all here.

I am also very lucky that MMWAUP is getting some great reviews:

In her review in the new issue (No. 80) of the Frogmore Papers, Alexandra Loske says: " It seems that Hershman has achieved two things here: She has perfected the art of the very short short story, making it appear utterly appealing and perhaps one of the most appropriate forms of creative writing of our age. She has also managed to form a bridge between poetry and prose. At times it feels as if one is reading a very well constructed, witty, moving long poem, without the boring bits. Excellent." 

On the Thresholds Short Story Forum, Vicki Heath writes: "every word is perfectly placed as she explores the offbeat world we live in." Read the full review here. 

And my friend Jon Pinnock calls MMWAUP " the work of a grown-up writer who has gained the confidence to let her muse off the leash and to follow it wherever it goes, however unexpected that turns out to be. " Read his review here.

Three of the fictions from My Mother Was An Upright Piano: Fictions are featured on the excellent book review site bookoxygen, which describes the book as "56 short, strange fictions which arrive out of left field, bringing warmth, wit and a deliciously off-beat perspective." Read them here.

Sally Zigmund reviews the book on her blog, The Elephant in the Writing Room, saying: "I am sure that everyone who reads this collection will see different colours, shapes and meanings from the ones I have discovered. But isn't that the point? These stories are what the reader brings to them. Reading Tania's fiction is like a being overwhelmed by wave on a deserted January beach that takes you to places you never imagined.  Stunning." Read her full review here.

Over on Goodreads, Berit Ellingsen says: "there is no doubt that Hershman is an expert of the very short story. The themes in the collection are nicely cohesive and the voice and narrative structure well varied. I’ve had the pleasure of reading many of these stories in their individual publication, but reading them all together for a full impression of the author’s warm voice and deft descriptions, was even better." Read the full review. And Roxane Gay says  "The stories that were great ... were truly great. I particularly liked how she was able to warp reality and time in different ways. Hershman is not lacking in imagination and this is definitely a book worth reading." Read the full review. And Annemarie Neary says: "This is a beautifully produced book with an open, elegant feel. The fictions themselves are extraordinary - compact, resonant and highly original." Read the full review.

Thank you to all of the above for taking the time not just to read my book but to express your thoughts and opinions. It is much appreciated.

Plymouth & Cork...

I'm not a very good blogger these days, I am sorry. If you take a look at the previous post you'll see what's keeping me busy - and there are other things i'm doing that aren't on the list too, a bit of a whirlwind time right now. But frankly, it's all writing-related, and it's ALL good! Last week I had the honour of having my own event at the brand-new Plymouth International Book Festival, in its first of what I hope will be many many years.... I chatted for about an hour, interspersed with reading some of the stories from MMWAUP, and I did worry that I was talking about myself too much. (A worry I have often). But the audience were just lovely, asked some great questions, and then came and chatted to me afterwards and bought books. It was great to talk to people, find out if they're writers, readers, what they're writing. It gives me such a boost, doing events like this, talking about the short story without anyone asking me to "defend" it, because I don't believe the short story needs defending...!

The next day I rushed straight off to Cork for the heavenly short story festival, my fourth time at the festival, a highlight of my calendar. This time, though, I was being worked very hard - teaching a 4-day flash fiction workshop, for three hours each morning, then reading from my new book, together with the wonderful and fellow flash-brained Nick Parker, author of The Exploding Boy and Other Tiny Tales (see left). Nick, my great mate Nuala Ni Chonchiur and I were then invited onto a panel entitled, somewhat controversially in our opinion, "Is Flash Fiction a True Literary Form or Just Something for Chancers" - luckily the large audience in Cork library seemed to agree with us that it didn't matter at all what a piece of writing is labelled as or how long or short it is. Phew!

I had the enormous honour of being the one to introduce and moderate the session with two new and instant favourite writers: the inimitable Canadian author Zsuzsi Gartner, author of two collections (Better Living Through Plastic Explosives and All the Anxious Girls on Earth) and the excellent English author Sarah Hall, whose first collection (finally, after four award-winning novels!) is The Beautiful Indifference. I was nervous about introducing them properly, because at first glance you might superficially assign their stories to very different genres, labels... But their stories are unlabel-able both because they are unique and because they have a lot in common, despite very different styles. I hope I did them justice - go and read their books, their stories will slay you. I love being slayed by a short story.

And then... yes, there's more! Later that night, much later, I was the first to read at a brand new event for the Cork fest, the Flash Fiction Rapid Fire, where writers literally queued on the stage and read their tiny stories, 500 words max, in quick succession! I was extremely proud that 7 of my 10 workshoppers read that night, many of them for the first time ever. I felt quite parental!

The next day was our last workshop day, and then an afternoon of events including the sublime Lydia Davis, certainly proving that word length has no bearing on story substance ... and then the final day of the festival we listened, spellbound, to Frank O'Connor award-winner Nathan Englander reading one of his stories and talking so wisely and enthusiastically about writing. A real real treat and a worthy winner!

To get back to the workshop, I felt like I learned so much from spending 4 days talking, reading and writing flash fiction with my group. I experimented on them and they were so receptive, no-one refused to do anything, and I think we all had a lot of fun. We batted around thoughts of what flash fiction might be, then let go of the need for definitions and just got on and did it. A fantastic group, they shared their work, and it was all so great, I expect to see their names gracing the pages of lit mags and competition shortlists very soon. 

If you fancy trying your hand at some flash fiction for the reduced time commitment of only 2 hours (!), there are still some spaces left on my workshop at Mr B's Emporium in Bath on October 11th. Visit Writing Events Bath to book.

Nuala is a much better blogger than me, she deserves her shortlisting for the Blog Awards Ireland - she has a lengthy blog post about the festival, with pictures. Read all about it here! Also, the phenomenal lit magazine Five Dials has put together a special Cork-festival-themed issue with contributions from many of the authors who were there. It's so big it's been split into two! Read Part 1 here, with stories by Lydia Davis, Kevin Barry, Nuala, Joe Dunthorne and more - I have a new short story (over 2000 words long!) coming in Part 2.

Around and About for the Next 8 weeks

By the time this blog post goes up I will be in Plymouth for my event tonight at the Central Library as part of the first Plymouth International Book Fest - do come if you are in the area, we kick off at 6.30pm!

I am around and about a lot over the next 8 weeks and I wanted to list all my events here, and if any of you can come to something, it would be great to meet you. But before that, if you're in the vicinity of Bath this Friday, head over to Story Friday from 7pm to hear my friend Sarah Hilary and five other writers read their short stories inspired by The Fall. Wish I could be there but I will be...

Sept 19-22nd: running four flash fiction workshops, Cork International Short Story Festival in Cork, Ireland, and reading from my new collection. Booking now open

Wednesday 26 Sept reading at the launch of the STILL anthology, Foyles, London, Event Facebook page, 6.30pm

Thursday 11 Oct running flash fiction workshop for Writing Events in Bath, at Mr B's bookshop, Bath, 6.30pm-8.30pm. Booking now open

Saturday 13 Oct Interviewing novelist James Long about his long-awaited sequel to Ferney at Unputdownable Bristol Festival of Literature, Waterstones, Bristol Booking now open

Tuesday 16 Oct reading at Ragged Stone, monthly open mic night, Portishead

Saturday 20 Oct Reading alongside Nikesh Shukla, Valerie O’Riordan, Sanjida O’Connell, Miles Chambers & Maria McCann at Unputdownable Bristol Festival of Literature, Left Bank, Bristol. Booking now open

Tuesday 23 Oct guest author, with Kerry Hudson, at Stories Aloud, Oxford

Thursday 25 Oct Doing workshop for creative writing undergrads, Bath Spa University, Bath

Saturday 27 Oct taking part in the Lit Up Write Now! one-day conference, Bournemouth. Booking now open

Monday 29 Oct reading at the Bristol University Staff Creative Writing Club, Bristol.

7 Nov guest at Swansea University creative writing seminar

19-24th Nov Co-tutoring an Arvon Foundation short story course with Adam Marek, and special guest Helen Dunmore, Totleigh Barton

After that...I will be having a rest!

Flash fiction tours South Gloucestershire

I wanted to give a shout-out to my friend and writing colleague Pauline Masurel, who is doing the wonderful job of bringing more flash fiction to South Gloucestershhire over the autumn!  She has organised a display of flash fiction books to browse and borrow which will be doing a tour of a number of libraries in South Glos this autumn.  Its itinerary is as follows:   

Bradley Stoke Library  -  10-15 September    

Patchway Library  -  19-28 September    

Filton Library  -  29 September-9 October   

Emersons Green Library  -  11-23 October 

Winterbourne Library  - 26 October-3 November

Also, Pauline, an excellent writer of the short and very very short, will be running a couple of free, informal workshops to introduce flash fiction, share some of her own tiny and magical stories and invite participants to write their own.  These will be taking place:

7-8pm on Thursday 18 October @ Emersons Green Library  

6-7pm on Friday 2 November @ Winterbourne Library

(Please note that the event at Winterbourne requires booking, which can be done at www.eventbrite.com)

The display and workshops are part of South Gloucestershire Council's 'Discover Festival' and further details of all events in the festival can be found at: www.southglos.gov.uk/discover.

If you are in the area, I highly recommend you checking out both the displays and Pauline's workshops, we could all do with more tiny fictions, something small and perfectly formed, in our lives, no?

On BBC Radio Bristol!

I was interviewed by the delightful Steve Yabsley - a fellow short story writer, it turns out! - on his show on BBC Radio Bristol yesterday. You can Listen Again to us chatting about short stories and me reading two from my collection on the show for another 6 days, til Friday 21st, here. I arrive 32 minutes in. Thanks to Steve for having me!

STILL anthology launch & short story competition!

This gorgeous creature arrived in the post this morning - ain't it beautiful? Of course, STILL is an anthology of short stories inspired by Roelof Bakker's photographs, so aesthetics are to be expected!

I'm delighted to have a short short story in there, Switchgirls - and I'm in great company, alongside Richard Beard, Andrew Blackman, SJ Butler, Myriam Frey, SL Grey,  James Higgerson, Justin Hill, Nicholas Hogg, Ava Homa, Aamer Hussein, Nina Killham, Deborah Klaassen, Sarah Ladipo Manyika, Claire Massey, Jan Van Mersbergen, Barbara Mhangami-Ruwende, James Miller, Mark Piggott, Mary Rechner, David Rose, Nicholas Royle, Preeta Samarasan, Jan Woolf, Evie Wyld and Xu Xi. I can't wait to read the anthology.

STILL will be launched at Foyles bookshop in London on Sept 26th - I will be reading my story, as will many of the other authors, so please do join us! Here's the event's Facebook page. Foyles will also be exhibiting the photographs with story excerpts.

Now, you too have a chance to be part of this wonderful enterprise - Foyles and Roelof are running a competition:  write a short short story of no more than 500 words inspired by Roelof's photograph here, deadline Oct 10th.

The winning story will be displayed in the Gallery at Foyles, a week after the competition closing date, alongside the exhibition, which runs from Monday 17th September until Tuesday 30th October, as well as on the Foyles and Negative Press London websites. In addition, the winner will receive a copy of Still, a signed 30 x 30cm print of the 'The Stage (Piano)' and copies of Nicholas Hogg's The Hummingbird and the Bear and Evie Wyld's After the Fire, A Still Small Voice. (The competition will be judged by Roelof, Nick, Evie and Foyles Local Marketing Manager, Lisa Bywater)

Find out more details on the Foyles website - the photograph that is your inspiration is just stunning, like all Roelof's images. Go for it - good luck! Hope to see you on Sept 26th.

A new "book trailer" for MMWAUP!

I have some lovely friends... here's the gorgeous "book trailer" my very talented pal, Ilene Prusher (whose excellent first novel, the Baghdad Fixer, is out in November) made for me. Cute, eh?

Waiting on our doormat

We just got back from holiday and here are all the goodies that were waiting on our doormat! So thrilling are they that I thought I'd give them all a shout out. So, we have...

Regular reads:

• New Scientist with its intriguing cover promising "Food for thought"
• The New Yorker, my staple weekend read, including a short story by Thomas McGuane
• Poets and Writers magazine, which I love every few months, not just for the competition deadlines but great articles about many aspects of writing
• Sentence, the annual journal of prose poetry, which I find enlightening and inspiring, sitting on the blurred boundary between prose and poetry. 

New arrivals:

• The first issue of The Liner, a brand new transatlantic and very gorgeous lit mag from both London and Los Angeles. It features a poem by Blake Morrison, among a great roster
• The first issue of Black & Blue magazine, also very good looking, and featuring a story by Angela Readman, so it's already impressing me!
• The first pamphlet in my subscription to The Cupboard Pamphlets, which publishes a pamphlet of creative prose every quarter. It's a gorgeous tiny object: Our Commutual Mea Culpa by Chanelle Benz.

Books

• Crime and Guilt by Ferdinand von Schirach - a collection of two collections of short stories by a German lawyer, bought because of Scott Pack's excellent review of one of the stories over at Me and My Big Mouth: Shorts.
• Lightning Rods by Helen DeWitt, the latest book in my subscription to And Other Stories, who supply me with fantastic literature every few months, including the stunning, Booker-longlisted, Swimming Home by Deborah Levy. I trust that this book will similarly enthrall. 
• Elsewhere, from Cargo Publishing - a volume of four collections which is  a joint production between the Scottish publisher and the fantastic McSweeneys, featuring 50 authors. Can't wait to get stuck inhere. 

 And finally, to entertain me when I need to give my eyes a rest from all this literary feasting... my new favourite find (thank you, BBC 6 Music!), Matthew E White's new album, Big Inner. So I will leave you with a treat, his song, Big Love. It's soooo good. Got to go, I've got reading to do!

Interview with Anthony Doerr

There's a lovely interview with one of my new favourite writers, Anthony Doerr, over at r.kv.r.y magazine - do check it out. A little excerpt:

I am very interested in how stories and novels can transport, and transport absolutely.  I’m very much a believer in John Gardner’s notion that fiction writers stitch together dreams, and that we don’t want to unconsciously break those dreams and wake our readers up.  So I spend lots and lots of energy trying to make my sentences as sensual and grounded and seamless as they can be.  And the best way to do that–the best way to transport a reader into another place, another life–is through moment-by-moment sensory detail: through the mouth and the nose, as Mc put it.  The path to the universal, I tell my students, is through the individual.  You reach for the stars by playing in the gravel.

Read the rest of the interview here >>

A quick roundup

So, a brief roundup of a few things - I am interviewed over at the Negative Press blog about my new story, Switchgirls, which is to be included in their anthology, STILL (Sept 2012) inspired by the wonderful photographs of Roelof Bakker, alongside these amazing authors:

Richard Beard, Andrew Blackman, SJ Butler, Myriam Frey, SL Grey,  James Higgerson, Justin Hill, Nicholas Hogg, Ava Homa, Aamer Hussein, Nina Killham, Deborah Klaassen, Sarah Ladipo Manyika, Claire Massey, Jan Van Mersbergen, Barbara Mhangami-Ruwende, James Miller, Mark Piggott, Mary Rechner, David Rose, Nicholas Royle, Preeta Samarasan, Jan Woolf, Evie Wyld and Xu Xi.

Launch event will be on Sept 26th at Foyles in London, more on that soon!

Flash fiction workshops:
There are still places left on the 4-day flash fiction workshop I am running at the excellent Cork International short Story Festival in Cork, Ireland, Sept 19-23rd. It's going to be a wonderful workshop, looking at flash fiction from many different angles and writing many new pieces ourselves, do come and join us! Whether you want to write very short stories or longer works, the tools for writing flash fiction are incredibly useful. More information here.

If you are nearer to Bath than Cork, and have an evening rather than 4 days,  booking is now open for the flash fiction workshop I am running on October 11th, 6.30pm-8.30pm, at the fabulous Mr B's Emporium bookshop. Contact Writing Events Bath to secure your place.

That's all for the moment!

It took three years but...

Today a short story I started working on in 2006 is published! Yes, the story may "only" be 800 words, but it took me three years to get those 800 words the way I wanted them. The story, Under the Tree, was accepted by Electric Velocipede at the end of 2009 - and today it's published in Issue 24. (The story is also included in my new collection, with Electric Velocipede's permission.)

I wanted to share a few words about the story, but SPOILER ALERT stop reading now if you'd prefer to just read the story.

Okay. It started with an image in my head: a mother watching her son sitting under a tree in his own garden. And I couldn't figure out - nor could she - what he was doing there. I got very bogged down in trying to find an explanation. Then I took the story-in-progress, which was written quite traditionally at that point, to a workshop run by the wondrous and inspiring Aimee Bender in June 2007. She encouraged us not to look for direct causes for our characters' behaviour, pointing out, quite rightly I think, that we humans very rarely have one cause for our actions and we often have no idea what has spured us to do something. Let go of cause and effect. Great. This began to release something in me ...

The next step which helped me progress with the story was reading two short story collections: Roy Kesey's All Over and Paddy O'Reilly's The End of the World. Roy's was the first example I'd seen of minimalism and experimentalism and that inspired me to move away from the traditional, take some risks, make the reader work. And Paddy's collection had a story in it (completely different from mine) which was divided into sections which each had section headings - and suddenly, using this structure, my story began to fall into place. Someone said once that sometimes structure can ride in like a knight on a white horse and save a story - and that certainly was the case here. It all started to come together.

Anyway, if you'd like to, you can read the finished story, all 800 words, here. I hope you enjoy it!

The Englishman by Helena Halme

Very interesting discussions still ongoing in the comments section of my previous post, and I am going to do a post summing up what we were talking about, but in the meantime I want to introduce you to Helena Halme and her debut novel, The Englishman. I've known Helena since we both did the MA in Creative Writing at Bath Spa University in 2003, and am so thrilled to be talking about her new book here today. Isn't it a gorgeous cover?

The Englishman is subtitled "Can love go the distance" and it is quite the page-turner, I've had difficulty stopping myself from devouring it. It is the story of Kaisa, a young Finnish girl who meets and falls in love with Peter, an English naval officer. As the blurb says:

"At the age of twenty, Kaisa has her life mapped out. After university in Helsinki, she’s going to marry her well-to-do fiancé, Matti, and live happily ever after. But in October 1980, she's invited to a British Embassy cocktail party, and meets a dashing Naval officer. In the chilly Esplanade Park the Englishman and Kaisa share passionate, secret kisses and promise to meet up again. But they live thousands of miles apart – and Kaisa is engaged to be married.

At the height of the Cold War the Englishman chases Russian submarines whilst Kaisa’s stuck in a country friendly with the Soviet Union. Will their love go the distance?"

Helena, who lives in England and is married to an Englishman, has made no secret of the fact that this novel has its roots in autobiography - in fact, it started life as a series of blog posts called How I Came to Be In England. But what she has done here so well is to completely fictionalize the story and provide all the required tension that keeps you reading and reading. All the small details about Finland and Sweden give the book such colour, and I love seeing England through Kaisa's eyes!

Helena and her book seem to lend themselves well (who doesn't?) to my writing & place questionnaire, so I asked her a few questions:

Where are you?

Helena

I live in Crouch End, North London.

How long have you been there?

I was born in Finland and moved to the UK some 25 years ago. Because my husband served in the navy, we move about a lot, finally settling down to Wiltshire where we lived for 15 years in a very rural setting. Some two years ago we decided we’d had enough of country life, upped sticks and moved to the city. And haven’t looked back.

What do you write?

Helsinki

I write fiction, mainly novels set in Finland and Sweden, where, as a child, I lived for a short while. My stories vary from romance (The Englishman) to family sagas (Pappa’s Girl, out in September), to spy thrillers (The Red King of Helsinki out in October). I also write a blog, Helena’s London Life, about my new surroundings.

How do you think where you and where you've been affects what you write about and how you write?

The Real Englishman: Helena's husband David

My origins have everything to do with what I write. I love describing life in Finland or Sweden in my books, as I think most people want a story to take them somewhere, not just emotionally but also geographically.

My latest novel, The Englishman, is set in Finland in the 1980’s and was inspired by my own story of how I met my husband and moved to the UK. It’s my third novel, but the one which is most closely based on my own life.

Sicily

But I am also hugely affected by my immediate surroundings. A few years ago, when we rented a villa in Sicily, I began a novel after watching a group of local boys dive into the sea from high rocks. Seeing them hurtle down time and time again, not looking where they were jumping, made me fear that they’d hurt themselves. I recalled how my husband had told to me many years previously about a young sailor jumping to his death on a day out by the coast of somewhere. In the story which I started (but haven’t yet finished) a boy plunges to his death from a rock. This story keeps haunting me, so I am sure one day a scene like this will turn up in one of my novels.

Thanks so much Helena, it's going to be a busy year with two more books coming out! You can buy The Englishman  as an ebook on Amazon (current price 0.77p!) or Smashwords ($0.99), find out more about the book  on Facebook and its blog and follow Helena on Twitter to keep up to date with this and her other books.  Good luck with it all, Helena, I am off to find out what happens with Kaisa and Peter....!

What if no-one sees short story collections?

This was going to be another mini-rant in the style of last year's complaint about some literary agents who have a "no response means no" policy, but then I started thinking. Over the past 8 years or so I've been in touch with maybe 20 literary agents, in the UK, US and Canada, and heard about many, many more from writer friends, and the refrain is always the same:

[I really like your writing but] I can't sell a short story collection (or novella), publishers don't want them; come back when you've got a novel. 

This week I had a slight variation on that theme in a reply from an agent (to whom I am very grateful that she replied and so quickly!):

Come back when you have a full length novel. 

While I'm not exactly sure what the requirements are for a full-length novel, this is not what I wanted to discuss. The thought suddenly struck me that if agents are blocking us at the first hurdle, publishers never get offered short story collections (or novellas). They never even see them. So how are they supposed to know whether they want to publish them or not?

Of course, it may be that the publishers are sending instructions to the agents along the lines of: Don't bring us short stories, poetry, novellas, science fiction, paranormal detective fiction, novels under 150 pages etc..etc.. etc.. and the agents are just acting as their gatekeepers. But with such gatekeepers, who aren't prepared to even try and fight for something that's slightly off-message, what are we to do, and, more importantly, what does it say about the state of mainstream publishing?

Once again, I give thanks for the many amazing small independent presses - Salt and Tangent Books in particular, on a personal level - who publish whatever they like, whatever they love, with not much thought of breaking even let alone profit. But is this the situation the major publishers want to be in? Do they not want to be persuaded - and in turn attempt, using their marketing wizards, to persuade a public that does, it seem still remain hungry for some novelty - by something different, something that isn't a novel?

I would love to hear from literary agents and publishers here - please pass on this blog post and see if anyone will comment. Am I not thinking commercially enough? Where is my thinking going wrong here? Be honest with me, am I being clouded by my own failure to find representation?

My life in short fiction

Dan Powell - a fantastic writer and short fiction champion whose short story, Half-Mown Lawn! is included in Best British Short Stories 2012 - asked me some of the hardest questions I've ever been asked to do with short stories, and it took me three months to answer them! They are now live on his excellent blog, part of his My Life In Short Fiction series - this way>>

Bookmunch: Experimental Yet Accessible

Ebba Brooks has reviewed My Mother Was An Upright Piano: Fictions at Bookmunch, calling it "experimental yet accessible", which makes me happy. She says:

Short fiction apparently doesn’t sell perhaps because it is notoriously ‘difficult’. It’s stuff to be studied in universities, not read for pleasure. Or is it? Hershman’s fictions are experimental yet accessible, and their length acts in their favour in a world where we are all apparently time-poor and attention deficit disordered.

The title story is a great place to start. It showcases Hershman’s ability to extend an apt metaphor, and make it resound with meaning, humour and pathos in a minimum of words:

“My mother was an upright piano, spine erect, lid tightly closed, unplayable except by the maestro. My father was not the maestro.”

The whole story is barely more than a page long, but this first line takes you right to the heart of the issue. Getting the opening right is one of the big challenges of short form writing, and it’s one of Hershman’s real strengths.

Ebba ends by saying: "Good book for people with no time. Read on public transport, between meetings, when the baby’s having a nap. Recommended for aspiring short fiction writers. Read this and learn your craft."Thank you Ebba and Bookmunch! Read the full review here.

And Other Poems

Poetry, as you know, is something that both thrills me and - when I am trying to write it - makes me quite nervous. I have written some things I think are poems, and have been published as poems, but still the nerves remain. So I was delighted when the wonderful Josephine Corcoran, my Twitter friend, asked me to contribute a poem to her brand new site, And Other Poems - "simply a blog of poems". All the poetry there has been previously published elsewhere, a lovely idea to have a site gathering poems that perhaps appeared in print so that more of us can read them. My poem, Moss, went up today - and I urge you to wander around the site, the other poetry, by Christian Ward and by Josephine herself,  is just fantastic. And the site's simplicity is a very soothing antidote to today's bombardment. I am honoured, thank you, Josephine, for asking.

Tony Hogan Pops By

I first met Kerry Hudson through her blog, Kerry's Window, a few years ago now, I think, bonding through short stories, of course! I am absolutely and utterly thrilled to now be welcoming her here to chat about her brand new and debut novel, the excellent-titled (she even beats my book for title length) Tony Hogan Bought Me An Ice Cream Float Before He Stole My Ma. It is a fantastically-voiced, evocative, dark and yet hopeful story of Janie, who talks to us from the moment of her birth, and whom we follow as her mother drags her from one less-than-salubrious Scottish council flat to another, with a succession of highly unsuitable boyfriends, including the eponymous Tony H.

Place and location are very strong in the book, and Kerry herself grew up "in a succession of council estates, caravans and B&Bs", so I decided to ask Kerry my Writing & Place questionnaire:

Tania: Where are you? 

The Turkish wedding dress shop

Kerry: I'm at my window looking over all of Hackney. I live above a Turkish wedding dress shop (yes, those are the dresses) on the top floor and can see all the way across Hackney to the BT Tower.

T: How long have you been there? 

K: Four years in total, broken by six months in Vietnam. So two years were spent up towards the Stoke Newington end which is very liberal and environmentally oriented (lots of yoga mats and organic food) and then the last two years down the Dalston end which is hipster central (think warehouse parties, 90's fashion and Red Stripe). For all that, there's an incredibly diverse community here: Caribbean, African, Turkish, Orthodox Jewish, Kurdish, Hungarian, Cockneys and a fairly big gay community and for the most part we all get along great. I feel so at home here, I truly love it.

T:  What do you write? 

Novels. I write short stories too but I find them far more difficult. I do poetry only when it is someone's birthday and I know they won't mind my rhyming 'cat' with 'mat' in their card. I'm about to start a short screenplay and want to adapt Tony Hogan into a stage play too. Oh, and lists. I am a list obsessive.

T: How do you think where you and where you've been affects what you write about and how you write? 

The view from Kerry's window

Because Tony Hogan... is based on my own upbringing I would say sense of place is hugely important to how I write (and to the book as sense of place is a significant thing Janie and her family lack). Every estate, council flat and B&B that Janie Ryan lived in, I lived in too and I couldn't have written what I did without those places.

Likewise, my second novel, Thirst, is set between my current neighbourhood and Siberia and I travelled across the length of Russia to make sure the Siberia sections were as honest and realistic as possible. Funnily enough, I've travelled fairly extensively elsewhere. I've never written anything exploring those travels but I like to think that one day it'll be time to write my Vietnamese/Parisian/American novel.

Thank you so much, Kerry - good luck with the screenplay and the adaptation into a stage play, I've tried those and they're really fun! To find out more about Kerry, visit her website and I highly recommend you get your hands on her book!

Interview & Book Giveaway

 

I'm interviewed over at Cyprus Well as their August feature - and giving away a copy of My Mother Was An Upright Piano to a lucky reader in the south-west of England! You just need to come up with a creative answer to the question posed...

Mother America touches down...

I am delighted to be hosting  Nuala Ní Chonchúir's second appearance on my blog in 12 months - for the second book of hers that has been published in that time! You may remember she was last here in December talking about The Juno Charm, her glorious fourth poetry collection. And now here she is again with her glorious fourth short story collection, Mother America (New Island) - and there is her novel,You, published in 2010.

A little about Nuala: She is a short story writer, novelist and poet, born in Dublin in 1970 and living in Galway. A story from this new collection, Peach, was published in the Winter 2011 issue of Prairie Schooner, and won the Jane Geske Award and was nominated for a Pushcart Prize.

This is a fabulous collection, which combines so many images, themes and Nuala's trademark beautiful use of language. It contains one of my favourite stories of last year, the Dublin Review of Books flash-fiction-contest winner, The Egg Pyramid. Read it. It's unforgettable.

For her stop here, I didn't want to ask Nuala questions I've asked before so I thought we'd play Word Association. I threw words at her that I drew from her stories and she responded to each without planning or thinking too hard. Read her responses below - and do feel free to play it yourself with the same words and share your responses in the comments section! Take it away, Nuala!

Art 

The beautiful art that fills my home by people as diverse as my father and my old friend, Pat Jourdan. Art makes me happy.

Mother 

A mother is what I have been for nearly 19 years, so almost half of my life. I think it’s a difficult job but has its good bits too. Also the word mother is one half of the title of my new book so I am extraordinarily fond of the word at the moment. 

Blue 

Oooh, one of my favourite colours. I collect blue and white pottery and glass. I love blue for its deep, mesmeric qualities. 

Home 

Dublin. I live in Galway, but Dublin is home. 

Science 

Knickers. That was my science teacher’s nickname. Bless her, she may have been brilliant but I learnt nothing. 

Feminism 

A subject dear to my heart. For me it’s all positive – I love a good feminist, man or woman. 

America 

A country I have fallen in love with, despite its flaws. I love American people’s positivity and can-do-ness. I have had fabulous times in New York, Los Angeles, Nebraska, Arkansas, Chicago. And I’m going back next year for more. 

Family 

This word makes me think of my wider family who mostly live in Dublin and whom I miss being around. They are good fun – we laugh a lot when we get together. 

Story 

One of my favourite things on earth is the short story, as reader and writer. To read a sublime collection, like Sarah Hall’s recent The Beautiful Indifference, makes me feel good about the world and about writing. Hall’s language; the tension in the stories – just wonderful. 

Money 

I hate money but would like lots of it. I am convinced I would make an excellent rich person. 

Love 

Being in love is the best thing ever. And giving and having my kids’ love blows my mind sometimes. I am surrounded by love these days and it is fantastic.

Thank you, Nuala, what a beautiful note to end on. Find out more about all Nuala's writings and activities at http://nualanichonchuir.com/, buy Mother America  - and if you didn't read The Egg Pyramid then read it now.

Stroud stories

Bill Jones, organiser of the excellent Stroud Stories live lit night at which I had the honour of reading a few months ago, asked me to post this:

Stroud Short Stories is back on Sunday, 14th October, and is looking for stories to be read by their authors at this event.

Stories can be between 50 and 1500 words in length and can be on any subject but, as Halloween will be approaching, SPOOKY STORIES ARE ESPECIALLY WELCOME. The deadline for submissions is: Sunday 16th September.

Please send your stories to stroudshortstories@yahoo.co.uk 

Looking forward to hearing from you.

With best wishes,

Bill

Visit: http://stroudshortstories.blogspot.co.uk/ for more information and photos of previous events.

Follow us on facebook: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Stroud-Short-Stories/183546818384683

Quickies

Just a quick note to say that I am over at Women Rule Writer today, where Nuala has made me answer the author questionnaire I'd been getting authors to fill in for The Short Review but never thought I'd answer myself  - about My Mother Was An Upright Piano! And, if you want even more of me waffling on, Joe M at Bristol Short Story Prize has kindly published the speech I made at the awards ceremony at ShortStoryVille on July 14th - my "while stocks last" speech! I've never really given a speech before, but was happy I managed to get a little physics in there too (but no Higgs boson, sorry). Also, the program has now been announced for the fab Cork International Short Story Festival so make your plans, book your train/plane/ferry, you don't want to miss this. And do come join me in the four-day flash fiction workshop I'm running, or one of the other fantastic workshops, including the above-mentioned Nuala -  we're going to have fun!

And don't forget to check out my previous blog post with upcoming deadlines, places to send your short stories and flash fictions.

Upcoming deadlines

It's been a while since I did one of these, here are a few upcoming deadlines for short story competitions:

July 31st The Sean O'Faolain short story competition: An excellent contest not just for its amazing prizes but because one sole judge reads every single entry!  Up to 3000 words, open internationally. First Prize: €2,000 (*approx $2690.82/ £1685.27), publication in the literary journal Southword, AND a week-long residency at Anam Cara Writer's and Artist's Retreat in Ireland. Second Prize: €500 and publication in Southword. Four other shortlisted entries will be selected for publication in Southword and receive a publication fee of €120. Entry fee: €15, US $20 or £15. Enter online or by post. Open internationally.

July 31st Ink Tears Flash Fiction competition: 500 words or less, previously published okay. Winner: £300 • Runner-up: £50 • 4x Highly Commended: £25 Entry fee: £3 for first entry, subsequent entries at a discount. Enter online.  Open internationally.

Aug 15th Gigantic Sequins flash fiction contest: Submit 3 stories per entry, each up to 1000 words, open internationally. publication of the winning piece in issue 4.1, special feature of the writer on our website this fall, a Gigantic Sequins 1-year subscription, $100 cash, and more! Entry fee: $5. Enter online. Open internationally.

Aug 26th Stringybark flash fiction and microfiction contests: Flash fiction: up to 1000 words, with link to Australia. Microfiction - 100 words, no Aussie link needed. Open internationally. First Prize - A$350 cash + publication + certificate + e-book + paperback (Value $368) Second Prize - A$150 cash + publication + certificate + e-book + paperback (Value $168) Third Prize - A$75 cash + publication + certificate + e-book + paperback (Value $93) Entry fee: AUS$9 per flash fiction. Microfiction - free entry with entry to flash fiction competition. Enter online. Open internationally.

Aug 31st Nanofiction flash fiction contest: Submit 3 stories per entry, each up to 300 words, open internationally. Prize awards publication and $500  - all entries considered for publication, all entrants receive a one year subscription to NANO Fiction and winners will be announced in September. Entry fee: $15. Enter online. Open internationally.

Sept 7th Costa short story award: Stories up to 4000 words, one entry per author. The winner will be announced at the Costa Book Awards ceremony in late January 2013 and will receive a cheque for £3,500. Two runners-up will each receive £750. No entry fee. Enter online. Residents of UK and Ireland only.

Sept 21st Sunday Times EFG Private Bank Short story award:  "The judges are looking for an outstanding English-language story of 6,000 words or under from a fiction author from anywhere in the world who has been published in the UK or Ireland. Stories can be unpublished or first published after 1st Jan 2012. The winner will receive £30,000, and the five shortlisted writers will each receive £1,000 as well as having their work published online. A longlist of 16 will be announced in January." No entry fee. One entry per author. Online or postal entry.

And a little further off...
Oct 1st  StoryQuarterly short story comp Open to short stories and novel excerpts of 8,000 words or less. Grand Prize of $1000 and publication in StoryQuarterly 46 First Runner-up $300 and publication in SQ Online Second Runner-up $200 and publication in SQ Online. $18 contest fee includes subscription toStoryQuarterly 46, to be published in the late Fall, 2012.

Oct 31st  The Salt short story and flash fiction prizes (there is also a prize for poetry). The Short Story Prize: max 5,000 words. 1st PRIZE £1,000 plus publication in The Salt Anthology of New Writing. 2nd PRIZE £500 plus publication in The Salt Anthology of New Writing. 3rd PRIZE £50 book token for use in Salt’s online shops plus publication in The Salt Anthology of New Writing. SEVEN RUNNERS-UP A further seven finalists will be published in The Salt Anthology of New Writing. Open internationally. Entry fee £10 for first entry, discount for subsequent. Enter online or by post.
The Flash Fiction Prize: Max 350 words. 1st PRIZE £500 plus publication in The Salt Anthology of New Writing. 2nd PRIZE £250 plus publication in The Salt Anthology of New Writing. 3rd PRIZE £50 book token for use in Salt’s online shops plus publication in The Salt Anthology of New Writing. SEVEN RUNNERS-UP A further seven finalists will be published in The Salt Anthology of New Writing.Open internationally. Entry fee £5 for first flash, discount for subsequent. Enter online or by post.

Nov 15th  Willow Springs fiction prize No word limit. The winner of the contest will receive a prize of $2,000, plus publication in Willow Springs.Open internationally. Every entrant receives a one year subscription to Willow Springs. Entry fee $20, or $25 for non-US. Enter online or by post.Open internationally.

Good luck to all!

If you were a piece of furniture...?

I love what my enormously talented and creative friend Vanessa Gebbie has done! She asked if it would be okay to use my new collection, My Mother Was An Upright Piano: Fictions, as the inspiration, asking anyone who followed her on Twitter this question: If you were a piece of furniture, what would you be? And she got the most marvellous responses from far and wide which she has now compiled into a fantastic blog post with many pictures! So, what would I be? A chaise longue, I think, slightly decadent and not terribly useful but with a hint of glamour!

Possessed!

I first heard of Niki Valentine when I read her excellent novel The Killing Jar (published as Nicola Monaghan) which I found utterly gripping, a dark story of drugs and family. So it's with great delight that I welcome Niki here to the blog in honour of the imminent publication of her new book, Possessed (published by Sphere), which sounds just as gripping! (My copy is on its way to me, I can't wait. How beautiful is that cover?). Here's the blurb:

Emma's life has always been a struggle, and now she's been accepted at a prestigious music school, she is determined to excel. But when the impossibly chic twins, confident Sophie and quieter Matilde, come crashing into her life - surrounding her with champagne and parties - they demand Emma's full attention. Then shy Matilde commits suicide and shockingly, her identical twin Sophie flourishes. Now odd things are happening to Emma: blackouts, waking up in strange places, bizarre dreams. Something, or someone, is consuming Emma's mind. Terrified, Emma begins to doubt everything and everyone around her, especially the beautiful Sophie... Powerful, twisted, atmospheric and disturbing, Possessed is a terrifying psychological thriller. 

Possessed is published as an ebook on July 25th and as a paperback on Oct 25th.

I thought I'd get nosey and ask Niki, who, as well as writing, teaches creative and professional writing at Nottingham University, my set of writing&place questions, which seem simple but I always find them very revealing! Welcome, Niki!


Tania: Where are you?

Niki: I’m in Aspley, Nottingham, just a couple of miles from where I was born, and streets away from where I spent much of my childhood, and where my first novel is set.

T: How long have you been there?

N: I’ve been living in Aspley again since last December, when my husband and I bought our first house. I lived on the other side of Nottingham before that, but was here again when my first novel came out, and when I got married. I’ve spent more time here than anywhere else in the world, despite all my travels. It’s a very working class area, with council and ex-council houses, and it feels like home when I walk the streets. I’ve been back in Nottingham, after wandering far and wide, since 2002, so ten years now. I came back to study at Nottingham Trent University, on their MA Creative Writing.

T: What do you write?

Niki and Allan Silitoe at the Broadway in Nottingham

N: I write gritty, realist literary fiction but also, more recently, psychological thrillers with a supernatural element. My last novel was a modern take on the ghost story set in the Highlands of Scotland and the new one, as the title might suggest, explores the idea of spiritual possession. I like stories about the paranormal that feel real, and where you can find alternative, psychological explanations for what’s happening to the characters.

T: How do you think where you and where you've been affects what you write about and how you write? 

Niki at the Empire State Building, New York City

N: Because I’d lived all over the world, for a long time I wrote about the big, glamorous cities I’d lived in, such as Paris and Chicago. When I came back to Nottingham, though, I realised how interesting my home city is and wrote a novel set here. Now, I tend to focus on ordinary characters in extraordinary situations, instead of the big cities. Being in Nottingham, especially close to the estate I grew up on, reminds me of being little. The world felt different then; more magical, perhaps, full of possibilities. Full of shadows too, and darkness. Walking these streets takes me right back there when I’m in the right mood.

More specifically, though, The Haunted was inspired by my honeymoon. Considering that it’s about a failing marriage, that might seem a bit ironic, but there’s the fiction in it. We travelled to the highlands and walked in the hills. We ended up walking through the dark one day, when we set out too late, and I was really struck by how quiet it was, and how lonely, and how frightening it could have been had I been with someone I didn’t trust. There are so many rumours about haunted bothies too, and I can understand why. The dark and the damp and the rugged landscape evokes the ghosts, I think.
 

Niki in her garden

I work at the University of Nottingham and, walking around its older campus, I’m often thrown back to what it felt like to be a student, away from home for the first time. Then I think about York University, where I lived for four years, and how young and naïve I was back then. I settled to it so easily but I was one of very few people from my kind of working class background. That got me to thinking about how the University experience could feel, especially if you were shy, and pushed into an environment where there was a lot of pressure. I love music, and taught myself to play the piano when I was younger, so all of that fed into my planning for Possessed. It’s not based on any of the Universities I know well but, in a way, inspired by all of those I’ve visited.


Thank you so much, Niki, it's really interesting to hear how you were inspired by your hometown after coming back from your world travels. Lovely to hear that you are enjoying living where you grew up, this is something that fascinates me, I can't really imagine it, I always think if I did, there would be too many ghosts of my childhood!

This makes me even more eager to read Possessed. You can pre-order it now from the Book Depository or Amazon (ebook & paperback). and do visit Niki's website for more about her books. Thanks for stopping by, Niki!

The Verb!

I have now mustered up the courage to listen to myself on Radio 3's The Verb and didn't run screaming from the room at the sound of my voice so I think it's okay! You can hear me reading my specially-written physics-inspired flash story and then chatting to Ian McMillan about it and about flash fiction... what a thrill to hear him say the name of my new collection in his wonderfully-mellifluous voice, I want to snip that bit out and keep it!

You too can hear him - and me - online for another 5 days, by clicking here. My segment is right at the beginning and I highly recommend listening to the whole program, with Charles Ferynhough, Julia Copus and Paul Heaton, it's wonderful.

Last week was exhausting, in the best way - and real proof, if ever any is needed, that you never know on a Monday morning what might happen by the Friday night!

Higgs Bosons, The Verb, and ShortStoryVille

It's been a very busy week - a wonderful event at the West Meon Festival on Sunday, talking short stories with Zoe Fairbairns, whose excellent new book, Write Short Stories and Get Them Published, is now available. Then Monday, interviewed on the Love & Science show on BCFM (see previous post).

Then a call, on Monday, from Radio 3's The Verb. Would I be able to write a Higgs-boson and quantum-physics inspired flash story by Wednesday morning to read and chat about on this week's show? Would I? Oh yes! I did, (and the very tight deadline definitely brought out something new, something I'd never done before) and then yesterday morning at the BBC here in Bristol I was recorded reading it and chatting to the fantastic host of the show, Ian McMillan, about physics & fiction, flash fiction and the wonderful words of science. It will be broadcast tomorrow night, Friday 13th, at 10pm UK time, and should be available as a podcast for 7 days after that. Find out more here>> 


As well as all that excitement, Tues and Wednesday I was running two school writing workshops at Fairfield High School in honour of ShortStoryVille, which is Bristol's short story festival, taking place here this Saturday, at Arnolfini! The first event, at 12pm, will be me introducing some of the Fairfield pupils reading their stories, I can't wait! Here, to whet our appetite, is the ShortStoryVille trailer, made by my partner, James, and his team:





The events of the day include discussions about Angela Carter's short stories, about digital publishing and readings from several of Bloomsbury's newly-published short story authors - as well, of course, as the awarding, in the evening, of the Bristol Short Story Prize! Find out how to book tickets here.

Hope to see you there. And for me, next week is looking, well, a little quieter... but then again, who knows what might come up?!

Love & Science

Just a quick note to say that I will be live on the Love & Science show on BCFM Bristol Community radio 93.2fm this evening, 5-6pm, talking about science... and fiction etc...and perhaps reading one of the fictions from my new book. You can listen online too.

I am really looking forward to meeting the host, Malcolm Love, and my fellow guest, Tim Kindberg, who sounds really fascinating! Should be available as a podcast afterwards, I will post the link here.

Addendum: Podcast here. It was a very interesting hour, I thought!