What does the word "story" mean to you?
"A story is something which wobbles reality, affects a change in the reader, shakes things enough that we see anew. I do not much care for the American style 'condensed novel' sometimes called a short-story. Shortness (under 10K) is not my definition of a short story. A short-story should, I think, have poetic elements and should think of itself as an extended poem, not necessarily poetically languaged but trying to unseat the reader, with a single insight, a beautiful phrase or the perfectly placed punctuation mark."
Alex Keegan, author of Ballistics, interviewed in July's Short Review.
Friday, 3 July 2009
Thursday, 2 July 2009
MY GUEST BLOG AT PETINA GAPPAH'S
I am a guest blogger today (my first time!) on the amazing Petina Gappah's site. Petina was just this week shortlisted for the €35,000 Cork City Frank O'Connor Award for her début short fic collection from Faber An Elegy for Easterly.
On Petina's website she has a Proust questionnaire and her answer to the question 'What do you most admire in a woman?' is:
'A good sense of humour, especially the ability to laugh at herself. Kindness, integrity and elegance.' I like that. And what does she most admire in a man?
'A good sense of humour, especially the ability to laugh at himself. Kindness, courage and integrity.' Interesting!
Anyhoo, see my post on Ms Gappah's site, about the notorious pram in the hall, here.
Tuesday, 30 June 2009
Cover of 'Nude'
This is the cover for my new short story collection Nude due out in September from Salt.
The cover image is by talented young American artist Rachel Manconi. Thanks to Rachel for permission to use her image and to Jen and Chris of Salt for ensuring a great cover for my book.
Excitement!
Monday, 29 June 2009
Cork-City Frank O'Connor Short Story Award Shortlist 2009
This news just in from the Munster Literature Centre! Irish writer Philip Ó Ceallaigh has been shortlisted for the second time for the Cork-City Frank O'Connor Short Story Award, as has Kiwi author Charlotte Grimshaw. And the wonderful Zimbabwean writer Petina Gappah is also on the list. I talked about Petina's Elegy for Easterly earlier here.
HUGE congrats to the shortlistees. Here is the announcement from the administrators' of the award:
The shortlist for the 2009 Cork-City Frank O'Connor Short Story Award has been decided by an international jury. The award at 35,000 euro is the richest prize in the world for the short story form and is given annually to an original collection of stories judged to be the best. Previous winners have included Haruki Murakami, Miranda July, Jhumpa Lahiri and Yiyun Li. The award is organised by the Munster Literature Centre with generous funding from Cork City Council.
Notable names edged out for a position on this year's shortlist include Booker winner Kazuo Ishiguro, Orange Prize winner Chimanda Ngozi Adiche, veteran short story authors Ali Smith, Mary Gaitskill and James Lasdun and reviewers' darling Sana Krasikov.
The winner will be announced in Cork on September 20th at the closing ceremony of the tenth Frank O'Connor International Short Story Festival which is the oldest annual short story festival in the world.
Further information can be obtained from Patrick Cotter, Director, The Munster Literature Centre, www.munsterlit.ie ++353 214312955
The shortlisted books are as follows:
An Elegy for Easterly by Petina Gappah published by Faber, London
Petina Gappah is a Zimbabwean writer with law degrees from Cambridge, Graz University, and the University of Zimbabwe. Her short fiction and essays have been published in eight countries. She lives with her son Kush in Geneva, where she works as counsel in an international organisation that provides legal aid on international trade law to developing countries. Her story collection, An Elegy for Easterly is published by Faber in April 2009. She is currently completing The Book of Memory, her first novel. Both books will also be published in Finland, France, Italy, The Netherlands, Norway and Sweden.
Singularity by Charlotte Grimshaw published by Vintage, New Zealand
Charlotte Grimshaw is a fiction writer. Her first novel was described as ‘New Zealand noir,’ and her later books continue to draw from a range of genres and dramatic situations. Grimshaw has contributed short fiction to anthologies, was awarded the 2006 Bank of New Zealand Katherine Mansfield Award, and published her first short story collection in 2007. Titled Opportunity, this collection was short-listed for the world’s richest short fiction prize, the Frank O’Connor International Short Story Award.
Ripples and other Stories by Shih-Li Kow published by Silverfish Books, Malaysia
Shih-Li Kow was born in Kuala Lumpur and was educated for the most part in schools in Malaysia. Her stories have been published in the anthologies, News from Home and Silverfish New Writing 7. Sh-li Kow holds a degree in chemical engineering and worked as an industrial engineer in a multinational consumer products company for more than ten years. She is currently in retail. She resides in Kuala Lumpur with her extended family and son, Jack.
The Pleasant Light of Day by Philip O Ceallaigh Published by Penguin Ireland.
Philip O Ceallaigh has lived and worked at a variety of jobs in Ireland,
Spain, Russia, the United States, Kosovo and Georgia.
He has lived mostly in Bucharest since 2000 where among other things he translates English subtitles for Romanian films. He has won the Glen Dimplex Award and the Rooney Prize for his first short story collection Notes from A Turkish Whorehouse which was also shortlisted for the Frank O’Connor Award in 2006.
Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned by Wells Tower Published by FSG New York and Granta UK
Wells Tower’s short stories and journalism have appeared in The New Yorker, Harper’s Magazine, McSweeney’s, The Paris Review, The Anchor Book of New American Short Stories, The Washington Post Magazine, and elsewhere. He received two Pushcart Prizes and the Plimpton Prize from The Paris Review. He divides his time between Chapel Hill, North Carolina and Brooklyn, New York.
Love Begins in Winter by Simon Van Booy published by Harper Perennial New York.
Simon Van Booy was born in London and grew up in rural Wales and Oxford. After playing football in Kentucky, he lived in Paris and Athens. In 2002 he was awarded an MFA and won the H.R. Hays Poetry Prize. His journalism has appeared in magazines and newspapers including the New York Times and the New York Post. Van Booy is the author of The Secret Lives of People in Love, now translated into several languages. He lives in New York City, where he teaches part-time at the School of Visual Arts and at Long Island University. He is also involved in the Rutgers Early College Humanities Program (REaCH) for young adults living in underserved communities.
HUGE congrats to the shortlistees. Here is the announcement from the administrators' of the award:
The shortlist for the 2009 Cork-City Frank O'Connor Short Story Award has been decided by an international jury. The award at 35,000 euro is the richest prize in the world for the short story form and is given annually to an original collection of stories judged to be the best. Previous winners have included Haruki Murakami, Miranda July, Jhumpa Lahiri and Yiyun Li. The award is organised by the Munster Literature Centre with generous funding from Cork City Council.
Notable names edged out for a position on this year's shortlist include Booker winner Kazuo Ishiguro, Orange Prize winner Chimanda Ngozi Adiche, veteran short story authors Ali Smith, Mary Gaitskill and James Lasdun and reviewers' darling Sana Krasikov.
The winner will be announced in Cork on September 20th at the closing ceremony of the tenth Frank O'Connor International Short Story Festival which is the oldest annual short story festival in the world.
Further information can be obtained from Patrick Cotter, Director, The Munster Literature Centre, www.munsterlit.ie ++353 214312955
The shortlisted books are as follows:
An Elegy for Easterly by Petina Gappah published by Faber, London
Petina Gappah is a Zimbabwean writer with law degrees from Cambridge, Graz University, and the University of Zimbabwe. Her short fiction and essays have been published in eight countries. She lives with her son Kush in Geneva, where she works as counsel in an international organisation that provides legal aid on international trade law to developing countries. Her story collection, An Elegy for Easterly is published by Faber in April 2009. She is currently completing The Book of Memory, her first novel. Both books will also be published in Finland, France, Italy, The Netherlands, Norway and Sweden.
Singularity by Charlotte Grimshaw published by Vintage, New Zealand
Charlotte Grimshaw is a fiction writer. Her first novel was described as ‘New Zealand noir,’ and her later books continue to draw from a range of genres and dramatic situations. Grimshaw has contributed short fiction to anthologies, was awarded the 2006 Bank of New Zealand Katherine Mansfield Award, and published her first short story collection in 2007. Titled Opportunity, this collection was short-listed for the world’s richest short fiction prize, the Frank O’Connor International Short Story Award.
Ripples and other Stories by Shih-Li Kow published by Silverfish Books, Malaysia
Shih-Li Kow was born in Kuala Lumpur and was educated for the most part in schools in Malaysia. Her stories have been published in the anthologies, News from Home and Silverfish New Writing 7. Sh-li Kow holds a degree in chemical engineering and worked as an industrial engineer in a multinational consumer products company for more than ten years. She is currently in retail. She resides in Kuala Lumpur with her extended family and son, Jack.
The Pleasant Light of Day by Philip O Ceallaigh Published by Penguin Ireland.
Philip O Ceallaigh has lived and worked at a variety of jobs in Ireland,
Spain, Russia, the United States, Kosovo and Georgia.
He has lived mostly in Bucharest since 2000 where among other things he translates English subtitles for Romanian films. He has won the Glen Dimplex Award and the Rooney Prize for his first short story collection Notes from A Turkish Whorehouse which was also shortlisted for the Frank O’Connor Award in 2006.
Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned by Wells Tower Published by FSG New York and Granta UK
Wells Tower’s short stories and journalism have appeared in The New Yorker, Harper’s Magazine, McSweeney’s, The Paris Review, The Anchor Book of New American Short Stories, The Washington Post Magazine, and elsewhere. He received two Pushcart Prizes and the Plimpton Prize from The Paris Review. He divides his time between Chapel Hill, North Carolina and Brooklyn, New York.
Love Begins in Winter by Simon Van Booy published by Harper Perennial New York.
Simon Van Booy was born in London and grew up in rural Wales and Oxford. After playing football in Kentucky, he lived in Paris and Athens. In 2002 he was awarded an MFA and won the H.R. Hays Poetry Prize. His journalism has appeared in magazines and newspapers including the New York Times and the New York Post. Van Booy is the author of The Secret Lives of People in Love, now translated into several languages. He lives in New York City, where he teaches part-time at the School of Visual Arts and at Long Island University. He is also involved in the Rutgers Early College Humanities Program (REaCH) for young adults living in underserved communities.
Tuesday, 23 June 2009
CLAIRE KEEGAN wins Davy Byrnes Award
Somewhat predictably, short story mistress CLAIRE KEEGAN has won the €25,000 Davy Byrnes Irish Writing Award.
Keegan’s winning short story 'Foster' was chosen from a shortlist of six by Richard Ford. Caroline Walsh, Literary Editor of The Irish Times, read from Ford's winning citation, in which he praised the writer’s “sparkling talent”.
Apparently Claire told how she walked across snowy fields with her entry to the comp close to the deadline, until she found a postbox, and had dropped the envelope into it before wondering how the postman was going to collect it in a mini-blizzard. Clearly and, luckily for her, her story made it to Dublin in time.
More here in today's Times.
Keegan’s winning short story 'Foster' was chosen from a shortlist of six by Richard Ford. Caroline Walsh, Literary Editor of The Irish Times, read from Ford's winning citation, in which he praised the writer’s “sparkling talent”.
Apparently Claire told how she walked across snowy fields with her entry to the comp close to the deadline, until she found a postbox, and had dropped the envelope into it before wondering how the postman was going to collect it in a mini-blizzard. Clearly and, luckily for her, her story made it to Dublin in time.
More here in today's Times.
Saturday, 20 June 2009
FUTURE OF IWC - HAVE YOUR SAY
There will be an Open Public Meeting to discuss the future of the Irish Writers' Centre on
Saturday 27th June at 3.30 p.m. in the Irish Writers' Centre
For the last few weeks the Board of the Irish Writers' Centre has been consulting widely with individual writers and with people interested in literature and the arts generally. It has also been engaged with sister organisations in the literature field. The purpose of this extensive consultation is to ascertain what role, if any, the Irish Writers' Centre should play in the cultural life of the country in the future. At a meeting on the 14 July, the Board will consider all the options and all the recommendations submitted.
If you have any recommendations regarding the future functions, activities, responsibilities, etc, of the Irish Writers' Centre and have not had a chance to submit them already, this open meeting will offer you the opportunity of doing so.
Irish Writers' Centre
19 Parnell Square
Dublin 1
t: +353 (0)1 872 1302
e: info@writerscentre.ie
w: www.writerscentre.ie
Saturday 27th June at 3.30 p.m. in the Irish Writers' Centre
For the last few weeks the Board of the Irish Writers' Centre has been consulting widely with individual writers and with people interested in literature and the arts generally. It has also been engaged with sister organisations in the literature field. The purpose of this extensive consultation is to ascertain what role, if any, the Irish Writers' Centre should play in the cultural life of the country in the future. At a meeting on the 14 July, the Board will consider all the options and all the recommendations submitted.
If you have any recommendations regarding the future functions, activities, responsibilities, etc, of the Irish Writers' Centre and have not had a chance to submit them already, this open meeting will offer you the opportunity of doing so.
Irish Writers' Centre
19 Parnell Square
Dublin 1
t: +353 (0)1 872 1302
e: info@writerscentre.ie
w: www.writerscentre.ie
Tuesday, 16 June 2009
HAPPY BLOOMSDAY - FROM ME AND UNCLE JIMMY
Ulysses and therefore Bloomsday marks the celebration of the day – 16th June 1904 – on which James Joyce had his first outing with his future wife, Galway-woman Nora Barnacle. In the book, it was a day on which not a lot happens to Leopold Bloom but it all happens in vivid, sometimes impenetrable, Joyce-speak.
And before you ask, no, I haven’t read it all – just bits. On the centenary of Bloomsday in 2004, at Nora Barnacle’s House on Bowling Green, I read aloud an extract that may have been about sex or may have been about the river but, either way, it was beautiful prose. One hundred readers read from Ulysses that day. (Click on the blurry image above to see my commemorative cert.)
Declan Kiberd’s new book on Joyce looks fascinating: Ulysses and Us: The Art of Everyday Living. In the Sunday Times magazine of the 7th of June, he wrote interestingly on the notion of bohemians with reference to Joyce. (If it was an extract from the new book, it didn’t say so.):
‘The Bohemians were arrogant,’ Kiberd said. ‘They saw Soho, Montmartre and Greenwich Village as spheres of sublimation, in which ideas and feelings now denied in everyday life could alone be enjoyed...“Culture” was now a separate sphere, disconnected from everyday life.’ Kiberd goes on to say that, ‘A healthy art arises from life and always returns to it.’ One good reason that those of us who practice art full time need to embrace healthy doses of real life, removed from our isolated desks, in order to write truthful fiction and/or produce good art. For me that means family life - the day to day of raising three kids and keeping a home, and a relationship, alive and happy.
Joyce himself said: “The ordinary is the proper domain of the artist. The extraordinary can safely be left to journalists.”
Joyce’s mother was a Murray from Chapelizod. My mother’s maiden name is Murray and her people were from Chapelizod – well, more accurately, the Strawberry Beds. My great-grandfather was notoriously secretive about his origins and I often entertain the (admittedly somewhat fanciful) notion that he was too embarrassed by his relative James Joyce’s writing to want to be associated with him. Yes, I am related to Joyce. If only in my fictional little mind...
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
