Mi Madre Era Un Piano Vertical

Am still on my travels - and oh my, what wonderful travels they have been, Mexico was the most welcoming and magical! - but just had to share this with you: I woke up to see that my short short story is in today's El Universal, one of Mexican's daily newspapers, translated into Spanish! You can see it (or, if unlike me, you speak Spanish, you can read it) here... The title is Mi Madre Era Un Piano Vertical - guess which story!

I feel so honoured, we got so much press coverage, the short story writer as (temporary) celebrity! I know it'll never happen again so I just enjoyed it. Will blog more when I get home!

ADDENDUM: I missed that they have also published a translation of another of my stories, The Painter and The Physicist. 

Mexico!!

I'm delighted to be heading off to Mexico this week as one of two short story writers - together with Paul McVeigh - given the honour of being the first of a veritable slew of writers the British Council's sending to Mexico this year! We are each doing two events - one in Mexico City, and then I head to Monterrey and Paul to Tijuana. If you happen to be nearby, details are here! And on this lovely poster above, I believe (sadly, I speak no Spanish)!

I'm really looking forward to visiting a country I've wanted to visit for many many years, and learning more about Mexican literature, the short story in particular. I feel ashamed at how little I do know, partly because of how little we get in translation over here. I am immensely excited at meeting the writers I'm doing events with - Monica Lavin, Emiliano Monge and Atonio Ramos Ravillas.

I'm also delighted that this fabulous new anthology that I am honoured to also be in, Flash Fiction International, contains a disproportionately large number of Mexican writers. From this I suspect that I will find many flash fiction and short story sympathizers! I will report back. Promise.

new writing...

There is shortly to be some non-me-me-me activity on this blog (I hear you cheer!) but for the moment, sorry, still me, in brief - delighted to have had a poem longlisted for The Rialto's Nature poetry competition! Also delighted to have a new piece of oddness up on Visual Verse (which is such a lovely 'zine, why don't you have a go?), another outing for an older flash on FlashFiction.net and four stories on MexicoCityLit in advance of my work trip to Mexico (more on that soon!) - and, for the next 30 days (perhaps?) me reading newly-commisioned food-related flash fiction and poetry -  in the fine and wonderful company of Simon Panrucker and Barny Houghton -  on Michael Rosen's Radio 4 show, Word of Mouth!