Blagging your way into a writing residency

I've been writer-in-residence in a biochemistry lab... and I am now writer-in-residence in a cemetery. How did these things come about? I'm glad you asked, because I've written about it over at RLF Collected! Here's a snippet:

I used to be a journalist and the joy of that job was the access it gave me. You say, ‘Hello, I’d like to write an article about you/your company’, and, most of the time, the door is opened wide. I met fascinating people and learned about worlds hidden to everyone except those who work there. When I moved to writing fiction, it seemed as though my life would involve a lot of alone time, which was fine: I like solitude. But I have a science background, and after my first story collection was published – which contains stories inspired by science articles – and I moved to Bristol, I decided I wanted to spend time with the scientists themselves. I had an undergraduate degree in science but I had no idea what it was like to do science on a daily basis. I didn’t wait for an invitation, or for a position to be advertised. I approached the Dean of the Faculty of Science and said, ‘Can I be your writer-in-residence?’...

Read the rest of the article here >>

Groceries - flash fiction prize

I've only recently started writing flash fiction again after a few years off, mostly writing poems. It's a joy to get back to characters, to making things up - and a true delight that one of my new flash stories recently won the Writers' HQ LGBTQ Flash Fiction contest! You can read the story, Groceries, here, if you'd like to. Thanks so much to the judges, Paul McVeigh and Kirsty Logan and the fab folk at Writers HQ.

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.

Short short poem - online course

 UPDATE: The course is now full!

I think you all probably know that I'm a fan of short things. So when the Poetry School asked me if I'd like to run an online masterclass, and, if so, on what - after swallowing the urge to say, Don't be silly, I can't run a MASTERCLASS, are you sure you mean me? - I said, How about short short poems? And they said, OK. So, I’m excited - and a little daunted - to tell you that registration is now open! There are only 10 places, we kick off in Jan, and it’s open internationally, so you can join us from anywhere. Here's the blurb:

Short Short Poems: White Space and Silence (Masterclass)

online Course

Leave no word unturned

Living in this age of constant word bombardment, why not give your reader the gift of a bit more white space, a little more silence? A poem can be any length, from one line to a whole book. But there is something magical about the very short poem, under ten lines or so; while less is not necessarily more, it is definitely different. ‘The short poem, at its best, brings about an almost instantaneous surge of both understanding and sensation unavailble elsewhere’, writes Simon Armitage in the introduction to the Short and Sweet anthology. In this advanced Masterclass we will be exploring the tiniest of poems, written by poets from Raymond Carver, Emily Dickinson and Charles Causley to Rae Armantrout, Andrea Cohen and Selima Hill, alongside the shortest new offerings in today’s poetry journals. We will weigh the weight of each word, each breath and comma, to assess what needs to be said and what can remain between the lines, a useful skill for any writer. We will also create our own short poems, as well as exploring the effects of a constellation of poems on a page, and excavating our longer works-in-progress to see what treasures might be hidden inside.

Masterclasses are an expanded version of our Interactive and International courses, with a much deeper consideration of technical craft and critical theory. These 12 week courses (maximum 10 places) are for advanced students only, and fluency with poetic language and ideas will be assumed. There are no regular live chats and they are suitable for UK and International students.

Booking details here: https://poetryschool.com/courses/short-short-poems-white-space-and-silence-masterclass …

National Poetry Day special offer!

 



It's National Poetry Day here in the UK today, and to celebrate, I have a special offer: buy a copy of my poetry collection, Terms & Conditions and get a FREE copy of my poetry pamphlet, Nothing Here Is Wild, Everything Is Open, FREE postage in the UK (£3 for rest of world) – and I will donate £1 from every sale to Book Aid International, a charity making sure everyone has access to books.

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>>

Powers of Ten

I'm very happy to have found a home at the Blue Fifth Review for an odd little hybrid poem/fiction inspired by the wonderfully strange 1970s science film "Powers of Ten" ! You can read the piece here and watch the film below!

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/ 





 

Talking about reading... and writing

Two new interviews with me this week - the first is an audio piece over at the Royal Literary Fund's website in which I talk about my reading habits and reference the Large Hadron Collider (of course):

'The first writing course I ever went on was actually a reading course. The library was my church as a child, but I'd never stopped to look at the page as a writer might'

Listen to the piece (which is 3 minutes long) here:  https://www.rlf.org.uk/showcase/tania-hershman-mrh/

And the lovely folk at the New Flash Fiction Review asked me some questions about my flash story, My Mother Was An Upright Piano, which is the title story of my second collection from 2012, and is shortly - and most thrillingly- being reprinted in an anthology, NEW MICRO — EXCEPTIONALLY SHORT FICTION (W.W. Norton & Co., 2018). Here's a taster:

TD: What gives micros their power? Language? Silence? Structure?

TH: As with any piece of great writing, this is hard to pin down, and I am an avoider of general pronouncements. I read around 1000 short and very short stories and poems, and non-fictions, every year, and I demand no less from a great piece of writing than to feel like I have been punched in the gut. Every piece that does that to me seems to do it in its own way, each writer makes it their own, which is the way it should be. I have a great love for a freshness of language, cliché turns me off, laziness of language will stop me in my tracks. Voice is what grabs me as a reader, the voice of a character or the narrator, in any piece of any length. The story itself, the plot, maybe be tiny and quiet, I never ask for enormous events to happen, there is great power in the small moments.

You can read the full interview, in which I carry on unhelpfully refusing to make grand pronouncements, here! http://newflashfiction.com/interview-with-tania-hershman/

Suffragette-themed writing workshop - coming to a location near you?

I ran a suffragette-themed flash fiction workshop for the fabulous Word Factory yesterday in the gorgeous Tara Theatre, culminating in a performance that night of the brand-new work the participants produced. I've never done anything quite like that before - and was very moved by the pieces produced by the 18 writers, which dealt with the present and the future as well as the past. I did a huge amount of research, and would love to run this workshop again - please do get in touch with me if you think you'd like me to run one near you! We can discuss fees & logistics, I am happy to customise it for different groups and different needs!

Happy Birthday to Some Of Us Glow...!

My short story collection, Some Of Us Glow More Than Others, is a year old today! In celebration, my publisher, Unthank Books, asked me to share some thoughts on writing short stories on their blog:

"What is a short story? As a writer, I’d rather ask: What can I make the short story do for me?" 

You can read the full blog post here, your thoughts on my thoughts very welcome!

and find out more about the book here: 

Bursaries for Arvon Flash Fiction course for BAME/Low income writers

My crowdfunding campaign went wonderfully -  I can now offer three £250 bursaries for BAME writers or writers on low income who would like to attend the Arvon foundation 5-day residential flash fiction course I am co-tutoring, with the amazing Nuala O'Connor, in Devon in November. More details about the course here - there are only a few places on the course left. This funding is coming directly from me -  if you'd like to be considered for one of the £250 bursaries (you will need to pay for the remainder of the course fee yourself) or you know someone who is not on social media who might like to apply, please email me taniah@gmail.com as soon as possible and let me know why you'd like the funding! It's going to be a wonderful week, come join us!

Tania

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!

Crowdfunding for Arvon bursary

Going on an Arvon residential writing course can be a life-changing experience for both beginner and more experienced writers - I know this from personal experience! However, the costs (£720 -£770 per place) can be daunting, even with the grants that Arvon itself offers, so I am crowdfunding to offer up to four half-funded places for those who wouldn't consider applying or be able to apply - BAME writers, writers on low income, writers from other marginalised communities - on the 5-day residential Arvon Flash Fiction course I am co-tutoring with Nuala O'Connor in November 2018. Every pound helps, if you can spare it! I have raised almost 25% already in only a few days, which is amazing.

When I have raised the funds I will call for applications from writers who would like one of the places.  You can find out more about the course here.

Terms and Conditions FilmPoem

I always love it when someone takes a piece of my writing and uses it as inspiration for another type of medium - several filmmakers have made films of my flash fictions and a poem, you can see them here (scroll down). And now Helen Dewbery and Chaucer Cameron of Poetry Film Live have made a film of the title poem from my new collection, published last year by Nine Arches Press - with the added delight that I asked my brother, Nick Hershman, if we could use one of his songs, and he agreed! I think the result is rather wonderful, I hope you enjoy it:

Terms and Conditions from Elephantsfootprint.com on Vimeo.

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!

My writing week - an audio diary

The Royal Literary Fund, my employers and a wonderful organisation supporting writers, asked me to keep an audio diary for a week, about my writing. I picked a week when I actually did some! If you'd like, you can listen to it here...

Quantum shorts competition 2017

I'm honoured to once again be on the judging panel for the excellent Quantum Shorts competition alongside Brian Greene, oh my! So, what do you need to do to win? Well:

You have from now until 1st December 2017 to send us a story up to 1000 words long. We challenge you to open your imagination to the strange ways of quantum particles and anticipate a new era of quantum technology

There is much inspiration for your stories on the website, do check it out - looking forward to reading your quantum flashes!

God Glows short story

My nuns & biochemistry short story ‘God Glows’, from my new short story collection, is For Books’ Sake’s Weekend Read this weekend! Here’s a little taster:

Mother Superior agrees to fund Emmylene’s equipment.
    “Science is so soothing,” she says, her deep voice making it sound biblical.
    Soothing? thinks Emmylene, almost tempted, once again, to blaspheme. Memories of frogs’ bodies slit open for prying fingers and the shrieking of one girl who vomited violently. Not so much, she thinks.
    “Pouring from one test tube to the other, the elements of life,” says Mother Superior. Emmylene sees that faraway look in her eyes.
    “Yes,” she says. “Soothing. I’ll go and place the order.”
    “Thank you, Sister Morris. Bless your endeavours.” Mother Superior sits back behind her desk and Emmylene goes to phone the supplier.

Read the rest of the story 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.