It's Story Sunday!

A little thing I started on Twitter a few months ago, StorySunday asks anyone to tweet a link to someone else's short story that's published online. It's basically for me to get new recommendations of stories... and if anyone else happens to enjoy it, then that's great! Anyway, here's my #storysunday widget, you can click on the links even if you're not on Twitter...

The First Story Sunday on Twitter

After leaving Facebook a few months ago, I've been using and enjoying Twitter much more than before, for its simplicity (no farmville, no distracting games!) and its usefulness, with people posting links to interesting and relevant articles, blog posts etc...Yesterday, I decided to start something up and see what happened: #StorySunday. If you're not familiar with Twitter, this is what's called a "hashtag", in other words it is how you set the topic of your tweet. And then people can search by topic. So, for example, #UKelection is a hashtag, or #WorldCup.

There is already #FollowFriday, where you post a tweet with names of people you follow on Twitter that you recommend to others, and #WriterWendesday, and also #FridayFlash, which is something I'm not completely clear about, but it sounds good!

The idea behind #StorySunday is that you link to a short story by somebody else that you've enjoyed recently. I was inspired by Sarah Salway's speech at the Bristol Short Story Prize awards ceremony where she said, stop having those discussions about whether the short story is alive or dead, if someone starts that, then just recommend some excellent stories for them to read instead. Such a great idea, something practical, show not tell!

For those of you who missed this and you are on Twitter, you can go and search for StorySunday. But I thought I'd also post all the stories people recommended here, so everyone can enjoy them, along with the name of those who Tweeted:

@taniahershman: The Father of Modern Chemistry" by Stefanie Freele in @PrimeNumberMag http://to.ly/5M7A

@danpowfiction: here's a link to Dorothee Lang's 'Sky Blue @Metazen http://bit.ly/a6eelA top piece of flash fiction

 @jonpinnockI enjoyed this one by @orbific this week: http://bit.ly/bXWb31

@JamesWall67 Enjoyed @AJAshworth story http://bit.ly/asuYGQ

@sara_crowley Enjoyed http://birdvillemag.com/i2-logan.html by @kirstylogan today (loved "squick of wet trainers...)  

@ benjaminjudge I'll add http://bit.ly/cruCzx by @lonlonranch to the mix if that's ok

@kirstylogan "I take long leisure tipping the velvet..." Still wildly in love with this Rachel Swirsky story: http://is.gd/dWIB8 

@SteveHimmer Mark Neely, "Self-Portrait on the Mountain" @wigleaf http://bit.ly/bwCnri 

@Jo_Simmonds Great story 'Spring never grows old' by Sam Jordison: http://bit.ly/dc9Z5P Love 3am magazine 

@sarahsalway one of my absolute favourites, A Real Doll by A M Homes - http://tinyurl.com/6qbj4c

@JHammons "Stations of the Cross" by Maggie Sokolik on @fictionaut http://bit.ly/dhLzhq

@sarahsalway   And here is interview with Alice Elliott Dark, author of the story I raved about at @BristolPrize - http://tinyurl.com/39w89gt

 

@AJAshworth Just taught me at Arvon, he's fab - Peter Hobbs, Deep Blue Sea http://www.theshortstory.org.uk/stories/index.php4?storyid=2

@OscarWindsor My first submission - a short short: http://tinyurl.com/34qj7b4 

This is one of my fave, recent, shorties: http://tinyurl.com/5pus5r

@scMFA   A  terrific story by @scMFA faculty member David Bajo archived at @FiveChapters: http://www.fivechapters.com/2009/lichen/

@ OscarWindsor  http://bit.ly/bIKmrb --A quirky, bloky, funny and really quite intellectual story from a fine short story wordsmith

@ Perednia   What You Pawn I Will Redeem by Sherman Alexie: http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2003/04/21/030421fi_fiction

So there you go, StorySunday recommendations for this week! Hopefully it will spread further next Sunday. May we all spend the week discovering wonderful new stories to share!

Addendum:
I managed to add a widget - see right - to display the latest #StorySunday Tweets! I'm quite proud of this.