And what if we were all allowed to disappear

‪I never dreamed I'd have a book with a gold cover! The amazing Guillemot Press have made my particle-physics-inspired hybrid book, 'and what if we were all allowed to disappear', into this gorgeous sparkly object! It's a limited edition - for more info about the book and to pre-order, click here 

How High Did She Fly - new pamphlet!

My brand new pamphlet, How High Did She Fly, joint winner of the 2019 Live Canon Poetry Pamphlet Competition, is now available! It contains 24 poems: half are inspired by Arthur Miller’s The Crucible, a play which had a powerful effect on me at 16; 30 years later, I decided to take another look and respond to some of its themes: women, voices, silence, love, sex and flight. Woven in between these are poems written at different times which are, I hope, create a conversation through and across the book. You can read two of the poems below, if you buy a copy from me before Jan 1st I will donate £1 from each sale to Samaritans

How High Did She Fly

UK £8.00 GBP Rest of World £9.50 GBP

I'm also offering a discounted bundle of How High Did She Fly + Terms and Conditions - with £1 donated to Samaritans from every purchase before Jan 1st.

How High Did She Fly + Terms and Conditions Discount Bundle

UK £15.00 GBP Rest of World £17.50 GBP

Who will call me beloved - Radio 4

The day has arrived! The arts documentary that Faith Lawrence and I have made about me being writer-in-residence in a cemetery and contemplating the language of memorials and how I - as a single woman with no children - might want to be remembered, will be broadcast on Radio 4 at 4pm, and will be available online after that: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000b4r1

If you're outside the UK the programme is going out on the World Service on Friday Nov 15th, in their Heart and Soul slot! https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/w3ct03by

I'd love to hear what you think - I've never done anything like this before! The Radio Times has it as a featured selection, in which they call me "something that baffles much of society: the deliberately single woman ", and a review on New Statesman said I sound "unpompous" and "untortured", all of which makes me laugh!

Live Canon Poetry Pamphlet Comp win!

Some very delightful news indeed - I am one of four winners of Live Canon's inaugural poetry pamphlet competition! My pamphlet is called How High Did She Fly, the title is a quote from Arthur Miller's The Crucible, a play that I saw when I was a teenager which had a huge impact on me. Half the poems in the pamphlet are inspired by the women in The Crucible and riff on the themes of women, women's voices, magic... and flying! Congrats to my fellow winners, Katie Griffiths, Miranda Peake and Robin Houghton, our pamphlets will be published some time in November, and there will be a launch party, so stay tuned!

New poem, The Aunts

I was lucky enough, as writer in residence at Manchester Southern Cemetery, to have a poem commissioned by the Manchester Poetry Library for the Radość Pisania: Manchester Polish Poetry Festival 2018. They asked me to respond to the work of Maria Pawlikowska-Jasnorzewska, the “Polish Sappho” (born in Kraków 1891, died in Manchester 1945), who is buried in the cemetery, and it was such a joy to discover her work, and then take inspiration from it. I read the poem at her grave during the festival, it felt immensely special. Here's a teaser:

The Aunts

Goodness and badness, stray from them
equally, say the aunts, robust
as hens and tough as millet seeds. Some
look through the window, others

are solving puzzles in a corner, one
is painting my ceiling. Good
and bad? I say. The aunts shake
and nod their heads. Outside...


You can read the full poem here.

Bumper week of publications

I'm not sure in my 15 or so years of writing that I've ever had a week like this - three pieces (in different genres) published in seven days: an audio poem, a science-inspired flash story and my second ever published piece of creative non-fiction! Here are the links if you'd like to listen to/read them.

Spendid, First Draft Manchester



How You Are, science-inspired flash fiction in Synaesthesia magazine

Rewatching Grey's Anatomy, creative non-fiction in The Real Story


I also have three poems in the new issue of print mag Golden Handcuffs Review - details here if you'd like to purchase a copy.

3 writing workshops in June in the North

Come write with me, no previous writing experience necessary! I'm running three writing workshop in June:

June 1 A science-inspired flash workshop as part of the Northern Short Story Festival in Leeds. More details here.

June 8 A place-themed flash fiction workshop as part of the inaugural Victoria Baths Weekend of Words, in the Victoria Baths in Manchester. Details here.

June 23 A very special tour of Manchester's Southern Cemetery  & cross-genre writing workshop together with fabulous tour guide Emma Fox as part of the Didsbury Arts Festival. Details here.

Bringing Myself With Me

My first piece of narrative non-fiction, Bringing Myself With Me, inspired by the large amount of TV I've been watching while I've not been very well, has just been published by the excellent Syndicated magazine:

For once I’d like to watch TV without me. I’d like to leave myself in the other room, happily chatting on Twitter, writing a poem, or tidying up and just sit and stare at the screen. Why do I need to bring myself into everything I see, from Grey’s Anatomy and all the doctors falling for one another and saving lives and screwing up, to the young woman on Shrill finding her feet, to Vera, the older police inspector who solves crimes and then goes home alone? It’s a constant in my head, asking, “Am I like that?” “Is that me?” “Would I do what she did?” “Have I been there?” “Would I like to be?”

You can read the full piece here - I'm off to watch more telly! (I have another piece of narrative non-fiction on TV-watching forthcoming in The Real Story - watch this space.)

Blagging your way into a writing residency

I've been writer-in-residence in a biochemistry lab... and I am now writer-in-residence in a cemetery. How did these things come about? I'm glad you asked, because I've written about it over at RLF Collected! Here's a snippet:

I used to be a journalist and the joy of that job was the access it gave me. You say, ‘Hello, I’d like to write an article about you/your company’, and, most of the time, the door is opened wide. I met fascinating people and learned about worlds hidden to everyone except those who work there. When I moved to writing fiction, it seemed as though my life would involve a lot of alone time, which was fine: I like solitude. But I have a science background, and after my first story collection was published – which contains stories inspired by science articles – and I moved to Bristol, I decided I wanted to spend time with the scientists themselves. I had an undergraduate degree in science but I had no idea what it was like to do science on a daily basis. I didn’t wait for an invitation, or for a position to be advertised. I approached the Dean of the Faculty of Science and said, ‘Can I be your writer-in-residence?’...

Read the rest of the article here >>

Groceries - flash fiction prize

I've only recently started writing flash fiction again after a few years off, mostly writing poems. It's a joy to get back to characters, to making things up - and a true delight that one of my new flash stories recently won the Writers' HQ LGBTQ Flash Fiction contest! You can read the story, Groceries, here, if you'd like to. Thanks so much to the judges, Paul McVeigh and Kirsty Logan and the fab folk at Writers HQ.

My first audiobook!

So - I've made my very first audiobook! Produced by the excellent SoundByte Recording, you can listen to me reading stories from my first collection, The White Road & Other Stories (Salt Modern Fiction, 2008). Available from Audible and Amazon -   click here to hear me reading a sample story, my flash story, Plaits.

Short short poem - online course

 UPDATE: The course is now full!

I think you all probably know that I'm a fan of short things. So when the Poetry School asked me if I'd like to run an online masterclass, and, if so, on what - after swallowing the urge to say, Don't be silly, I can't run a MASTERCLASS, are you sure you mean me? - I said, How about short short poems? And they said, OK. So, I’m excited - and a little daunted - to tell you that registration is now open! There are only 10 places, we kick off in Jan, and it’s open internationally, so you can join us from anywhere. Here's the blurb:

Short Short Poems: White Space and Silence (Masterclass)

online Course

Leave no word unturned

Living in this age of constant word bombardment, why not give your reader the gift of a bit more white space, a little more silence? A poem can be any length, from one line to a whole book. But there is something magical about the very short poem, under ten lines or so; while less is not necessarily more, it is definitely different. ‘The short poem, at its best, brings about an almost instantaneous surge of both understanding and sensation unavailble elsewhere’, writes Simon Armitage in the introduction to the Short and Sweet anthology. In this advanced Masterclass we will be exploring the tiniest of poems, written by poets from Raymond Carver, Emily Dickinson and Charles Causley to Rae Armantrout, Andrea Cohen and Selima Hill, alongside the shortest new offerings in today’s poetry journals. We will weigh the weight of each word, each breath and comma, to assess what needs to be said and what can remain between the lines, a useful skill for any writer. We will also create our own short poems, as well as exploring the effects of a constellation of poems on a page, and excavating our longer works-in-progress to see what treasures might be hidden inside.

Masterclasses are an expanded version of our Interactive and International courses, with a much deeper consideration of technical craft and critical theory. These 12 week courses (maximum 10 places) are for advanced students only, and fluency with poetic language and ideas will be assumed. There are no regular live chats and they are suitable for UK and International students.

Booking details here: https://poetryschool.com/courses/short-short-poems-white-space-and-silence-masterclass …

National Poetry Day special offer!

 



It's National Poetry Day here in the UK today, and to celebrate, I have a special offer: buy a copy of my poetry collection, Terms & Conditions and get a FREE copy of my poetry pamphlet, Nothing Here Is Wild, Everything Is Open, FREE postage in the UK (£3 for rest of world) – and I will donate £1 from every sale to Book Aid International, a charity making sure everyone has access to books.

The White Road Audiobook!

Today's the 10th birthday of my first book, The White Road & Other Stories, published in 2008 by the fab Salt Publishing! To celebrate, I've made an audiobook with the wonderful Soundbite Recording, which will be out later this month. Here's a teaser:  



 More info on the book here>>

Powers of Ten

I'm very happy to have found a home at the Blue Fifth Review for an odd little hybrid poem/fiction inspired by the wonderfully strange 1970s science film "Powers of Ten" ! You can read the piece here and watch the film below!

Writing and Mental Health

I've never been asked questions about writing and mental health & well-being before - here is an excerpt from my responses to questions by the Ignis Poetry Collective, a new organisation aiming to "explore and improve mental health via poetry and writing"

Do you think there has there been a direct impact upon your mental health/well-being as a result of leaving behind science journalism in favour of fiction and poetry? 

Yes – I was much calmer when I was a science journalist! I had some sort of structure, I had deadlines, I was being paid for each article, and more than that I was leaving the house to meet fascinating people, learning about new technologies and breakthroughs, it was very stimulating, I loved that job. But writing fiction was my dream from childhood, and at a certain point there was no more ignoring that. When I started writing short stories, I also started experiencing great mood swings and anxiety, because I was delving inside myself, spending more time alone – and obviously no-one was waiting for me to produce anything, and the chances of getting paid for it were fairly slim.

You can read the full interview here: https://ignispoetrycollective.wordpress.com/blog/ 





 

Talking about reading... and writing

Two new interviews with me this week - the first is an audio piece over at the Royal Literary Fund's website in which I talk about my reading habits and reference the Large Hadron Collider (of course):

'The first writing course I ever went on was actually a reading course. The library was my church as a child, but I'd never stopped to look at the page as a writer might'

Listen to the piece (which is 3 minutes long) here:  https://www.rlf.org.uk/showcase/tania-hershman-mrh/

And the lovely folk at the New Flash Fiction Review asked me some questions about my flash story, My Mother Was An Upright Piano, which is the title story of my second collection from 2012, and is shortly - and most thrillingly- being reprinted in an anthology, NEW MICRO — EXCEPTIONALLY SHORT FICTION (W.W. Norton & Co., 2018). Here's a taster:

TD: What gives micros their power? Language? Silence? Structure?

TH: As with any piece of great writing, this is hard to pin down, and I am an avoider of general pronouncements. I read around 1000 short and very short stories and poems, and non-fictions, every year, and I demand no less from a great piece of writing than to feel like I have been punched in the gut. Every piece that does that to me seems to do it in its own way, each writer makes it their own, which is the way it should be. I have a great love for a freshness of language, cliché turns me off, laziness of language will stop me in my tracks. Voice is what grabs me as a reader, the voice of a character or the narrator, in any piece of any length. The story itself, the plot, maybe be tiny and quiet, I never ask for enormous events to happen, there is great power in the small moments.

You can read the full interview, in which I carry on unhelpfully refusing to make grand pronouncements, here! http://newflashfiction.com/interview-with-tania-hershman/

Suffragette-themed writing workshop - coming to a location near you?

I ran a suffragette-themed flash fiction workshop for the fabulous Word Factory yesterday in the gorgeous Tara Theatre, culminating in a performance that night of the brand-new work the participants produced. I've never done anything quite like that before - and was very moved by the pieces produced by the 18 writers, which dealt with the present and the future as well as the past. I did a huge amount of research, and would love to run this workshop again - please do get in touch with me if you think you'd like me to run one near you! We can discuss fees & logistics, I am happy to customise it for different groups and different needs!

Happy Birthday to Some Of Us Glow...!

My short story collection, Some Of Us Glow More Than Others, is a year old today! In celebration, my publisher, Unthank Books, asked me to share some thoughts on writing short stories on their blog:

"What is a short story? As a writer, I’d rather ask: What can I make the short story do for me?" 

You can read the full blog post here, your thoughts on my thoughts very welcome!

and find out more about the book here: 

Bursaries for Arvon Flash Fiction course for BAME/Low income writers

My crowdfunding campaign went wonderfully -  I can now offer three £250 bursaries for BAME writers or writers on low income who would like to attend the Arvon foundation 5-day residential flash fiction course I am co-tutoring, with the amazing Nuala O'Connor, in Devon in November. More details about the course here - there are only a few places on the course left. This funding is coming directly from me -  if you'd like to be considered for one of the £250 bursaries (you will need to pay for the remainder of the course fee yourself) or you know someone who is not on social media who might like to apply, please email me taniah@gmail.com as soon as possible and let me know why you'd like the funding! It's going to be a wonderful week, come join us!

Tania