And I had a wonderful time last Sunday night reading at Stroud Stories in the company of these excellent writers: Thursa Swindall, Anthony Hentschel, A.J. Grace-Smith, Adam Horovitz, Rachel Levay, Rommy Collingwood, Pauline Roberts, Aidan Rush, Jo Bousfield, and Esme Lloyd-Baldwin. You can see pictures on the Stroud Stories blog.
Tuesday night's Spread the Word event in London, Short Story: Big Picture, for which I was on a panel with Helen Garnon-Williams (editor, fiction, at Bloomsbury), Di Speirs (head of readings, BBC Radio) and Ted Hogkinson (online editor, Granta), expertly chaired by Aasiya Lodhi, BBC Radio producer, was very interesting. We talked about whether Britain lags behind America and/or Europe in terms of enthusiasm for stories, the problem of there being not enough prizes for short story collections, who is publishing short stories - longer ones as well as shorter - and took excellent questions from the audience, including what those of us who read for competitions we wished we weren't seeing in short stories! I refused to answer any questions relating to the "rules" of short story writing, since I don't believe there are any, and Ted and I, when asked for our vision of where the short story would be in 10 years, both envisaged an iTunes-like way to deliver single short stories to readers.
It was fascinating for me to be part of this discussion - and a great honour - and did make me wonder about the future. What is the purpose of a short story collection - for its author, for the reader? This is something I am personally thinking about as I enjoy promoting MMWAUP, and think about future projects. The world is changing... but music lovers still by albums, don't they? I do. Sometimes. Hmm. Food for thought! Answers in the comments please! :)
Tuesday night's Spread the Word event in London, Short Story: Big Picture, for which I was on a panel with Helen Garnon-Williams (editor, fiction, at Bloomsbury), Di Speirs (head of readings, BBC Radio) and Ted Hogkinson (online editor, Granta), expertly chaired by Aasiya Lodhi, BBC Radio producer, was very interesting. We talked about whether Britain lags behind America and/or Europe in terms of enthusiasm for stories, the problem of there being not enough prizes for short story collections, who is publishing short stories - longer ones as well as shorter - and took excellent questions from the audience, including what those of us who read for competitions we wished we weren't seeing in short stories! I refused to answer any questions relating to the "rules" of short story writing, since I don't believe there are any, and Ted and I, when asked for our vision of where the short story would be in 10 years, both envisaged an iTunes-like way to deliver single short stories to readers.
It was fascinating for me to be part of this discussion - and a great honour - and did make me wonder about the future. What is the purpose of a short story collection - for its author, for the reader? This is something I am personally thinking about as I enjoy promoting MMWAUP, and think about future projects. The world is changing... but music lovers still by albums, don't they? I do. Sometimes. Hmm. Food for thought! Answers in the comments please! :)
