2 free places on Arvon flash & short story course

I had a wonderful time tonight running Zoom flash fiction masterclass for Arvon to raise funds for 2 FREE places on our in-person flash & short story course in January at Lumb Bank. for those from marginalised communities and/or on low income. To apply for one of the free places, email me by Dec 17 tania@taniahershman.com telling me in 250 words or less why you'd like a free place and why this flash & short story course in particular would be valuable for you. No need to disclose financial information. Course info here: https://www.arvon.org/writing-courses/courses-retreats/flash-fiction-short-story/

Arvon free place!

I've raised funds for 2 bursaries for the Arvon face-to-face week-long Beauty of Brevity writing course I'm tutoring with Niall Campbell for writers who wouldn't otherwise be able to come - writers on low income and/or from marginalised communities. There's one free & one 40%-funded place - email me TaniaH@gmail.com by Oct 15 to apply, we'd love to have you, please don't think you're not worthy of these bursaries! And please pass this on to anyone you think might benefit.

Here's info about the course:

Monday November 29th - Saturday December 4th 2021

The Hurst

We could spin cliches here – less is more, small is beautiful, short and sweet etc… – but let’s waste no time and cut to the chase, because that’s what we will be doing on this course. Without sacrificing depth, richness, story or meaning, we will examine and probe the tiniest works made of words – whether as prose, poetry or other shapes – and take inspiration from other miniatures across all fields, from the microscopic in science and art to the briefest of films and pieces of music, to create our own. Together we will approach the very small from many different angles, cutting down to it, working up to it, weighing it to feel every word, every pause and punctuation mark, discussing what is needed, what can be let go. Come join us in praise of the petite. No miniaturising – or writing – experience necessary!

 

https://www.arvon.org/writing-courses/courses-retreats/hybrid-brevity/

Kickstart your writing - from January!

I'm going to be running my 2 hour Zoom Kickstart Your Writing workshop on the first Monday of every month from January, 7pm UK time: a mix of reading, discussion & writing exercises to get you writing, from poems to stories, non-fic & hybrids! It will cost £20 per workshop, you can sign up for as few or as many as you like, with a discount for 3 or more - and there will be free places available for those who need them.

Everyone welcome, beginners and more experienced writers who need a bit of a firmly gentle shove! Email tania@taniahershman.com to sign up.

5 day Short Story Challenge

In April the Arvon Foundation ran a 5-Day Short Story Challenge using daily prompts that I’d written to guide you through the drafting of a new short story. Over two thousand people took part, and there were such enthusiastic responses, it was a joy to see! If you missed it the first time – or if you did it already but would like another week of daily writing nudges – here’s your chance! I’m running it again myself, using the same prompts, from Monday May 11 – Friday May 15. Every day you will get an email with a writing prompt and reading material to kickstart your imagination. 


The cost to sign up is £5 – half of which is to provide me with a small amount of income, and half I will donate to Refuge, a charity which helps women and children experiencing domestic violence, something which has only increased during this lockdown. (I am also offering several free places, see below.)

Click here for more details and to sign up!

My stories on Stinging Fly Podcast

I was astonished to discover today that the wonderful Irish writer Cathy Sweeney is reading and discussing two of my short stories on the Stinging Fly literary magazine podcast. What an honour. And Cathy has a great conversation with the Stinging Fly's editor about genre boundaries, as well as reading one of her own fabulous stories. You can listen here if you'd like!

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.

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>>

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/ 





 

Why I write: A sense of wrongness

I'm over at the RLF's Vox audio podcasts today, with a piece I wrote and recorded for their "Why I Write" series. I had no idea what I was going to say before I started writing the piece - and thinking about it, I realised something I hadn't understood before, that I write out of a sense of wrongness: "For the first forty-four years of my life I’ve always felt in some way or other, myself, wrong. Wrong inside this body. Wrong inside my head. Not a strong wrongness, but a slight vague feeling." You can listen to the rest of my musings on wrongness, rightness and writing here!

A personal short story anthology

Jonathan Gibbs invited me to contribute to his fantastic weekly project (which you can sign up to to receive by email) in which a short story fan picks their own "personal anthology" of 12 short stories, sometimes on a theme, sometimes not. I really enjoyed putting my personal anthology together, and picked 12 stories that are all available to read online, ranging from 400 to 4000 or so words, and from the US, UK, New Zealand, Ireland and Israel. Here's a taster:

When I started compiling my personal anthology, at first I thought it would be more of a Desert Island short stories, the ones that have stayed with me for years, the stories I use over and over again in workshops and which leave me reeling each time I read them (my requirement for a great short story). But then I stepped back and noticed a theme running through: Family. Not just the one we are born into, but the families we choose, be that in romantic relationships or friendships. This is something that crops up in my own work again and again – my first collection turned out (unplanned) to be about different ways to approach parenthood, or non-parenthood, and all my stories (as perhaps all stories of any length are) address the difficulties of relating to other people. These are 12 of my all-time favourites, varying in length from a few hundred words to a few thousand, and moving from the UK to America, New Zealand, Ireland and Israel. I would be very happy with them on a desert island – and they are all available to read online too. I hope you are left reeling from some of them too.

'Mother' by Grace Paley, First published in Later The Same Day (FSG, 1985), included in Sudden Fiction, edited by Robert Shapard and James Thomas (Peregrine Smith, 1986), and available to read online here

This is one of the first very short stories I ever read, in an anthology of “sudden fiction” edited by Robert Shapard and James Thomas and published by Norton in 1983, and I was knocked sideways by it. How is it possible to do all this in just over a page?...

Read the rest here!

There's No-One In the Lab But Mice - On Radio 4 again!

BBC Radio 4 just re-broadcast my short story from last year, There's No-One In the Lab But Mice (produced by the excellent Sweet Talk Productions) in which I imagine what might happen when all scientists go on strike... And they allowed me to read it myself, for the first time! It's now available on iPlayer for those of you in the right regions to get that sort of thing - until Oct 22nd.

Carpool Poetry - and Much Giggling

Clive Birnie, poet and publisher, who runs the brilliant Burning Eye Books, has a venture he calls Carpool Poetry, in which he drives around one or more writers and videos him talking to them about their writing. So, here we are, talking very very seriously about my new books. (Warning: there is giggling. It's mostly me.)

More on permission - to go straight ahead and follow diversions

Four years ago, I wrote a blog post for Writers & Artists on the subject of "permission" - a very important word to me, in writing and in life. I've just written a new post for W&A, a follow-up, talking about the new permissions I needed to move from short story writing into poetry, something that scared and daunted me! An excerpt:

This year sees the publication not just of my third short story collection, but also my first poetry collection. POETRY. When we last met, I was not a poet. Don’t tell anyone, but I didn't like poetry. I didn't understand it, I liked my words to stretch from one margin to the other. Line breaks? Why would anyone want to do that? How do you read them? What is a line? Where are my sentences?
So, how did I get from that to complete adoration of the line break, an insatiable appetite for reading poetry, and even to calling myself a poet?

Very slowly. And with many shots of permission along the way.

Permission to write poetry came differently from short story permission. I had always been writing prose (I never called it “prose” until I started hanging out with poets, for goodness’ sake!). I read stories as a child, so I knew roughly what one should look like on the page. After a few years, though, I needed permission to take myself seriously as a writer – and then the largest permission injection to propel me to my next stage: taking risks in my writing, experimenting...

Read the full article here:  Permission To Go Straight Ahead and Follow Diversions

June TaniaReads

Hello! In the run-up to the publication of my debut poetry collection, Terms and Conditions (see the gorgeous cover on the left, by artist Hollie Chastain), I'm delighted to read you four new poems from the book - and to give you details about my launch events in Manchester (July 27th) and London (July 31st), do head to my website to find out more. Here is this month's audio - happy listening!

Book launches in the North & South!

Please do come and celebrate my books with me at one of my launch parties in July, in Manchester or in London, where I'm immensely delighted to be joined by some truly amazing special guests as part of a cross-genre celebration - of poetry, short stories, novels and non-fiction!

July 27th - Book Launch & Cross Genre Celebration, together with Jo Bell and Kate Feld, at Waterstones Deansgate, Manchester. More details here.

July 31st - Book Launch & Cross Genre Celebration, together with Jacqueline Saphra, Melissa Harrison and Zoe Gilbert, at Waterstones Gower Street, London. More details here.

Coming May 2nd from Unthank Books. My third collection. Never would have believed it. Farrah Jarral, doctor and broadcaster, says this about the stories (warning: may scare you!):

This beguiling collection of writing defies categorisation and is unlike anything I've ever read before. Some Of Us Glow More Than Others is like a 21st century Edgar Allen Poe meets Margaret Atwood, with a sprinkling of Ursula Le Guin. The bright and sometimes eerie thread of science runs through it, reminding us of our fundamentally biological nature, and illuminating the boundaries between us and technology. Hershman's masterful, crystal clear hand weaves together satire, poetry, ethical commentary and science fiction into a tender, faintly dystopian treatment of the human condition. Science is Hershman's muse, but Some Of Us Glow More Than Others is never sterile, and teems with the possibilities that she invites the reader to consider. Her lyrical vignettes and fragments of intriguing stories leave the reader wondering: is this the future, or an imaginative counterfactual past / a reimagination of what could have been? She reframes the familiar by tweaking small details to create unexpected and unsettling scenes that stay with you for hours, from quotidian domesticity to complex human relationships. Her lucid prose sparkles with the most evocative words science has to offer. It's almost as if Philip Larkin rewrote Black Mirror. Science and art, genetics, religion, ecology and the animal world all come together in this extraordinary collection. I found myself constantly surprised by Hershman's deft storytelling, perfectly captured details, and the way she drew my attention to the alien things of everyday life. Hershman navigates the complex relationship between the modern scientific world, and the soft, living creatures subject to it, with tenderness, elegance, and wit. Whether chemistry and poetry or genetics and sexuality, Hershman infuses science into her stories with a lightness of touch and great tenderness. I will be re-reading it - and not just once.

Tania Reads

I just sent out the first of my monthly 'Tania Reads' audio recordings of me reading poems and stories from my two collections, coming out later this year. Here's this month's, do sign up here to get it straight to your Inbox!

Arvon Starting To Write Course Aug 2017

I am really excited about co-tutoring on an Arvon 'Starting to Write' course for the first time, in August 2017! The three 5-day residential Arvon writing courses I went on over 10 years were quite literally life-changing, and it is a privilege to now be able to, I hope, pass some of that on. I had a great time tutoring Arvon's first flash fiction course this year, with the inimitable Dave Swann.

Next year, why not come and join me and my amazing co-tutor, Jo Bell, a great friend of mine, fantastic poet and teacher, at the wonderful Totleigh Barton in Devon - with our special guest, Inua Ellams, who is hard to describe because what doesn't he do? It doesn't matter what you write or want to write, it's about words in whatever shape they come! We will work hard, but we will also laugh, a lot. And eat clotted cream. It's Devon.

Here's a little more about the course, and we will have some news soon about funding we are organising to assist those who wouldn't normally be able to come on one of these courses...

. STARTING TO WRITE

Jump-start your word-machine

GENRE: Starting to Write
Aug 14th - Aug 19th 2017
Totleigh Barton

Starting to write fiction, poetry or other forms raises questions: Write what? How to write? Why write at all? There are no rules, no simple answers, but during our week together we will write, read, talk and imagine, leaving you with tools to discover how your own peculiar and unique word-machine works, as well as new pieces and ideas to propel you forward.

More details on how to apply here >>

If you're looking for a seasonal gift for the writer - or would-be writer - in your life, you might like a copy of Writing Short Stories: A Writers and Artists Companion (Bloomsbury, 2014), which I co-authored with the excellent Courttia Newland, and which includes short pieces from a number of fantastic short story writers in the middle, ideas for how to get your writing going and lists of our favourite short stories for more inspiration! You can get a signed copy from me here if you'd like (please do let me know in the message to the seller who to sign it to), with free postage in the UK. I am happy to post abroad too!

New Science-Inspired Story on Radio 4 This Sunday

It's been one of the greatest thrills of my writing life, having my short stories read on the radio. This is how it all started for me, my first "published" short story was actually a broadcast, in 2003, on the Afternoon Reading on Radio 4. There have been quite a few more since then, and I have written especially for radio a number of times - and now I have a brand new story on Radio 4 this Sunday night, Aug 28th, which for the first time they have allowed me to read! It's produced by the excellent Jeremy Osborne for Sweet Talk Productions. It's called "There's No-One In The Lab But Mice", and you can hear it live at 7.45pm and it will be available on Listen Again for 28 days after that, I believe. I hope you enjoy it, I had a lot of fun writing it!