We want your general-relativity-inspired stories!

I'm really thrilled to be part of this fabulous new project, initiated by my friend Pippa Goldschmidt, a fellow fiction writer, poet and novelist with a passion for physics and science-inspired lit in general! We are co-editing an anthology of short stories and essays inspired by Einstein's Theory of General Relativity, which has its 100th birthday next year! The book will be published by Freight Books, we have a great line up of fiction writers and physicists - and we have left a little bit of space in there which could be filled by YOUR STORY. Yes, you - no physics knowledge required! Here's what to do:

Open call for contributions to ‘I am because you are’: the anthology of short stories inspired by general relativity

Einstein published his revolutionary paper on general relativity in November 1915 and changed the way we think about the world. He also purportedly insisted that imagination was more important than knowledge – so here's a chance to use yours and borrow from his -  with no background in physics required!

General relativity turns our ideas about space, time and mass on their head. It predicts astonishing objects such as black holes: so compact that nothing – not even light - can escape them. It explains how the Universe started from a hot, dense explosion and has been expanding ever since. And it utterly befuddles accepted ‘common sense’ notions about space and time.

To celebrate the 100^th anniversary of this world changing theory we are publishing an anthology of short fiction and non-fiction inspired by general relativity, which will be edited by Pippa Goldschmidt and Tania Hershman. 'I am because you are' will be published by Freight Books in Autumn 2015. Around fourteen authors are contributing short stories, alongside essays by astrophysicists about the impact of general relativity on cosmology, black holes and quantum gravity.

Now we want your short fiction! We have assigned space for three more stories and we’re challenging writers to write a short story of no more than 3000 words - shorter is fine too - inspired in some way by general relativity.

Rules

The closing date is 28 February 2015.

Stories should be a maximum length of 3000 words (with no minimum) and written in English.

Stories should be your own work and should not have been published or accepted for publication elsewhere.

Entrants can be of any nationality.

Entrants can only submit one story.

Each story should be formatted as follows:

12 point arial or times new roman, provided digitally as a MS Word, RTF or TXT file.

The front page should include your name, address, email address, phone number and wordcount.

Your name should not appear anywhere else on the story.

Send your stories to us at info@freightbooks.co.uk as an attachment with ‘general relativity short stories’ in the subject line of the email.

Results

Chosen writers will be contacted no later than May 30th 2015 and a the titles and authors of the three chosen entries will be posted on Freight Books' website by 10th June.

Copyright

Copyright will remain with the authors

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?!