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Guest Editor, March 2011: Valerie O'Riordan
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Short things I've Read Lately: I don't exclusively read short fiction; I try to alternate between short story collections and novels (and the occasional item of non-fiction) as well as stories I've found in online lit-mags, and I also try to mix it up between new indie publications and the old reliables like Carver and Flannery O'Connor (one of my all-time favourites). Recently, I've read Comma Press's 2008 anthology of new horror stories, and the stand-out tales there were A.S. Byatt's Doll's Eyes and Frank Cottrell Boyce's Continuous Manipulation - brilliantly creepy and very uncanny indeed. I've also caught up on Michel Faber's first collection, Some Rain Must Fall, which I liked, and I'm trying to revisit some Chekhov - I often have a niggling feeling that I haven't read enough of the classics. |
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Valerie O'Riordan Valerie was the winner of the 2010 Bristol Short Story Prize. Her flash fiction has been shortlisted for the Bridport Prize and was published by Cinnamon Press in their latest anthology, Exposure, as well as in Bugged, The Spilling Ink Review, Litro, Bewilderbliss and more. She graduated from the Creative Writing MA at the University of Manchester in 2010 after several years working as a video editor. |
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A couple of recent releases that I've loved have been Tom Vowler's The Method and Other Stories and Jo Cannon's Insignificant Gestures - both new writers to keep an eye on. I want to also give a quick shout-out to David Foster Wallace and Denis Johnson, both of whose short fiction I dip in and out of whenever possible. Because I do quite a bit of reviewing, I'm lucky enough to get sent books and anthologies that I wouldn't otherwise hear about - or that seem intimidatingly hefty and/or expensive! - and this has lately included a few excellent short story collections. The BBC National Short Story Award 2010 Anthology, as well as being a mouthful to pronounce, is meaty on the inside, despite its brevity. Sarah Hall's shortlisted story, in particular - Butcher's Hall - was astounding. Then there was the Granta Book of the Irish Short Story; like any large, sweeping collection, it's got its highs and lows, but the highs were extremely high. I especially loved pieces by Maeve Brennan, Claire Keegan, Clare Boylan, Frank O'Connor and - a new favourite of mine - Kevin Barry. His books (a story collection from 2007 and a novel due this April) have shot straight onto my wishlist. |
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Onine mags: |
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| I love the online short story community - not only the writers' chat and recommendations you get from Twitter and facebook and various review sites like the Short Review, but also the countless literary magazines that constantly publish quality, innovative fiction. And as well as providing good reading material, they spur me on to keep writing and submitting. Hurrah! |
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Some of the places I keep revisiting include PANK! (the design of their site is fabulous), elimae for weird and wonderful flash fiction, FRiGG, flashquake, Hobart... It's a long list. But the big advantage is that they're all free to read online, so there's nothing stopping you from diving in - though it might take you a while to resurface. And there's always the New Yorker's fiction podcasts, and the Guardian's (ahem) fairly indistinguishable version of the same, for audio fun. What I like about those is the accompanying discussions and the degree of huge enthusiasm the readers bring to their chosen tales. The Short Review
PANK!
elimae
FRiGG
flashquake
Hobart |
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The Writing Process:
I'm a pretty slow writer, and I find it quite difficult to concentrate on more than one thing at a time. Right now I'm revising a novel-in-progress, and people have asked me if it's a very different process that the writing of flash fiction, which is the type of short story I usually tend to gravitate towards. As this is my first novel, I don't really have a clear-cut answer, except to say that this story just feels longer than the ones I've worked on in the past. I tend to think in terms of scenes - can you tell my background's in film and television? - and in my short stories, there's not many scenes, while in the novel, there's a glut of them that need to be stitched up in a neat row. With a short story, I like to work from a prompt - a found object or a snippet of conversation or a line of poetry - and I'll build a character and a scenario around that. I prefer to write a draft as fast as I can, and then I'll revise/hone/toss it away as necessary. A deadline often helps. Much of my short story work is done in the context of my writing group, the Fiction Forge, which works on a peer-review basis - we all submit and then critique each other's work within a certain time-frame. It's very motivating. I'm an inveterate procrastinator, so motivation is a fantastic thing - as are writing competitions. They don't usually cost much to enter, and there's nothing like the confidence boost you get if you get long- or short-listed - and because they're mostly judged anonymously, new writers are rarely at a disadvantage.
What's Lined Up Next?:
Popular wisdom tells me that I ought to be clearing space in my flat right now for our impending first child; instead, I'm frantically stockpiling reading material to keep me going over the next few months. High on the short fiction list are: Kelly Link's Pretty Monsters, which I've had for ages now and am saving for a rainy day because it sounds right up my alley - wierd, wicked and spooky, according to the blurb; both Original Bliss and What Becomes by AL Kennedy (her novel Day blew me away); some Robert Coover and Donald Barthelme, because I do love some good old Americana; Etgar Keret's The Nimrod Flip-Out, because various twitter pals adore Keret, and who am I to question them?; and some Alice Monro (The Love of a Good Woman) because she's consistently excellent.
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