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Short Stories for the Win
In such strange times, it’s easy to lose track of all kinds of things. So I was surprised (but heartened) to find two recent successes with short story submissions from my second book.
Thank you
I was lucky enough to have recently had my story 'Orbiting' read on BBC Radio 4 as part of their Stories from the Southern Cross series. Success like this comes occasionally from luck, but more often from hard work, and not just mine. In that respect, I'm indebted to friends, colleagues and fellow professionals, all of whom helped either take Orbiting to a necessarily high standard or, in the case of Alex Adsett, could read a contract without going cross-eyed...
#39: Runaway by Alice Munro - by Belinda Rule
In a writing class, I was once given an exercise of analysing sentence rhythm by replacing all the nouns and verbs in the opening sentence of a favourite story with different ones. But I had brought in Alice Munro’s ‘Runaway’, and I felt an almost violent aversion to doing it...
5 Things You Didn’t Know About Richard Yates - by Ryan O'Neill
1. Despite writing two excellent short story collections which included several stories now acknowledged to be classics, Yates, to his eternal chagrin, never had a story accepted by The New Yorker while he was alive. Apparently the magazine objected to his ‘mean-spirited view of things.’ One story ‘The Canal’ was belatedly published years after his death.
5 Things You Didn't Know About Junot Diaz
1. Diaz published his first collection of short fiction, Drown in 1996, but didn't publish his next work until 2007. That book, The Brief and Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, would eventually go on to win the 2008 Pulitzer Prize.
#36: The Scarlatti Tilt by Richard Brautigan
Richard Brautigan was a novelist, poet and short story writer in the 1960's and 70's. Depending on who you talk to, his work was beautiful or depressing, funny or tragic, and perhaps both at the same time. Opinions being opinions, I won't bore you with mine, but to say that at his best, he wrote some of the most stunningly beautiful fiction I've ever read...
#35: Where We Must Be by Laura van den Berg
While it's important to honour the classics of short fiction as truly great stories, I feel it's equally important to place modern writers within such a context. It's all too easy to suggest that today's writers struggle to compare without fully evaluating their experimentation with style, topic, and structure...
#34: My Father's Axe by Tim Winton
It’s easy to neglect the Australian short fiction that's shone in the past thirty years. Were one to revisit the classics, they'd find writers such as Moorhouse, Jolley, Carey, Goldsworthy, Kennedy, Tuner-Hospital, Hitchcock, and Robert Drewe, all of whom have experimented with the form to great effect. Unless they’ve been living in a commune, they’d also consider Tim Winton and his incredible talent for writing powerful, succinct short fiction...
Let's Talk about Sex (In Writing)
This post was supposed to be about Robert Drewe's Baby Oil, but I reread the story and it didn't grab me...
The Best Short Stories and Collections of 2010: Part Two
Just in case you didn't get your dose of short fiction magic on Wednesday, I now present part two of 2010's best short stories and collections. The stories are different (although Wayne Macauley rates a second mention) and so are the experts...aside from that, the same magic pervades throughout. More to read, more to savour...
The Best Short Stories and Collections of 2010: Part One
2010 has seen a dazzling array of stories, anthologies, and short story collections. Rather than prescribe my own favourite short stories for the year, I've found some of the best people in the Australian literary scene to help us out. Here Australia's writers, publishers and editors share their best short stories and collections from 2010...