blog.saltpublishing.com » Frank O’Connor Prize

Short Stories — the Future’s Bright?

Jen — Fri, 08 Oct 2010 13:35:56 +0000

This year’s Frank O’Connor and Small Wonder festivals have been and gone, the UK’s first National Short Story Week is around the corner, and at Salt we’re in the throes of putting to press our autumn collections of short fiction, including the winners of the inaugural Scott Prize. For a genre that people often lament as being neglected and forever in the shadow of its longer cousin the novel, there certainly seems to be a lot of activity going on to support and promote it, its writers and readers. But is it all a flash in the pan, does the short story really have a future and if so, what does that future look like? We asked some leading movers and shakers in the short story world what they thought:

Pat Cotter: Director, International Frank O’Connor Short Story Festival:
In order for an artform to remain art it must be constantly open to innovation and evolution. As soon as a form stops changing, becomes codified, meets lazy expectations instead of challenging them, it stops being art and becomes mere tradition. The short story can survive for discerning readers of the future by changing with the times it moves through, absorbing influences from other contemporary artforms (cinema, the lyric poem, even sometimes that most bourgeois of commodities: the Novel) to shape its own direction.

Sara Crowley: Author and Bookseller:
Technology affords the short story many opportunities for promotion. iPhones, e-readers et al. enable browsing of online journals, and story downloads, making literature more easily available. Furthermore, when we display really good short story collections in our bookshop we have healthy sales of them, so let’s be optimistic!

Tania Hershman: Author and Founder, The Short Review:
In the future as I imagine it, the short story would be nothing special. The short story would be a given. No need for campaigns to “save” it or articles about its renaissance. No, it would just be there, in daily newspapers, in collections in its own section of bookshops, on Kindles and iPads and iPhones and Sony eReaders and whatever devices follow those. Neighbours would meet in the street, moan about the weather, and then exchange short story recommendations. People waiting in queues would read a quick short story while they were waiting, then get on the bus or train with that little shiver that comes from having read something complete and devastating in 5 minutes. The Short Review would close, no one understanding the need for a journal completely devoted to reviewing short story collections. The short story – special? What do you mean? It’s always been there and it always will.

Nicholas Royle: Editor, Author, Reviewer, Agent, Publisher, Teacher of the Short Story:
The short story will survive anyway because it is a perfect art form. A novel is too big to sit in your mind and unfurl like a flower. A poem is too short to tell you a story involving enough to absorb you. I guess it could do with a little help, though. Magazine editors could stop lazily extracting stories from forthcoming collections and commission original stories instead. And maybe literary editors could offer a little more support by running regular review columns for short stories and perhaps acknowledging the existence of a thriving small press sub-culture, with its anthologies, collections, magazines and chapbooks.

Maureen Scott: Director, Ether Books:
Ether Books is a new Digital company that believes the short story will have a renaissance as more and more readers consume byte sized reads on their Digital eReader devices including the smart phone. One of our launch writers Toby Litt explained “short stories and smart phones were pretty much made for each other.” Consumers always carry their mobiles with them and their behaviour is rapidly changing. Ten years ago nobody read their emails on their mobile phone; now it is a very common method of accessing email on the go. Ether believes consumers will adopt mobile reading as more and more great content is available to consumers literally in their pocket. More than 4 billion mobile phones are currently used around the globe, and in markets like Japan mobile reading is a commonplace activity. Great short stories and their writers have a new channel to market via mobile phones and we are predicting and enabling short stories for smart phone consumers.

Ian Skillicorn: Director, National Short Story Week:
The short story will undoubtedly survive, but perhaps our focus should be on who those future readers will be. Most writers don’t need to be convinced of the joys of the short story, in fact many people involved in celebrating the short story are writers of the form themselves. There are a multitude of short story magazines, websites, live events, podcasts, competitions and projects, but we still need to find ways to encourage the wider public to experience them.

Millions of people read novels, newspapers and magazines every week, but may not consider the short story as a means of entertainment or enlightenment. Similarly, large numbers of people choose to make long journeys or sleepless nights bearable by listening to music or audiobooks on their MP3 players, but don’t think to listen to a short story instead. The challenge is to encourage them to become the readers and listeners of the future. It would be a great pity if the short story survives as a form celebrated and experienced mainly by writers and by readers who are already convinced of its merits. Those of us who are enthusiastic about the short story should be coming up with innovative and effective ways of getting people to explore the form and discover what they are missing. Hopefully National Short Story Week will be one way of encouraging active dialogue among writers, publishers, bookshops, libraries and anyone else involved in producing short fiction works.

Clare Wigfall: Author:
My husband claims to believe in the Mayan predictions of World Armageddon for 2012. He’s been going on about this for as long as I’ve known him. The year after we met, he gave me a copy of Major John Jenkins’ Maya Cosmogenesis 2012 for Christmas. He called me his Blood Moon in the inscription. He has this vision of the future for us in which together as a family we’re driving across a dystopian landscape in a Mad Max scrap vehicle.

Assuming we survive, I imagine I will still be creating short stories. Writing them down on concrete slabs maybe, or recounting them to our three-year-old daughter as together we syphon fuel from abandoned petrol stations to make fire. I hope they will bring her comfort. I hope I’ll be able to paint pictures in her mind of our current pre-Apocalyptic world as I know and love it. If short stories can potentially survive the 2012 Armageddon, they can survive pretty much anything.

So, what do you think? How can the short story survive and thrive for readers of the future?

Jhumpa Lahiri interviewed in the Irish Times

Chris Hamilton-Emery — Sun, 28 Sep 2008 17:02:00 +0000

Jhumpa Lahiri, winner of this year’s Frank O’Connor International Short Story Award, talks to The Irish Times Literary Correspondent and member of the judging jury, Eileen Battersby.

Read the interview by following this link: A Serious Voice in a Brash World

Frank O'Connor Festival 2008

Chris Hamilton-Emery — Thu, 25 Sep 2008 06:09:24 +0000

I’ve been back a couple of days now and only just about recovered enough to write about the time I spent at the Frank O’Connor Festival in Cork. I guess that means that I did it right! The festival started on Wed 17th Sept; I arrived late on the 19th. The full programme is
here
: writers from all over the world, including three of Salt’s authors, Carys Davies, Tania Hershman and Vanessa Gebbie. Usually the line-up comprises the shortlisted authors and as there was no official shortlist this year, I like to think that the people who read would have been on it (certainly, they deserved to be). I met so many people, heard so many stories, saw so many fantastic sights, it’s difficult to condense it all. But hopefully the following account gives you some idea of how it all went.

Friday, 19th September:

Woops! Sorry, you’ll have to
click here
to read more. Go on, click, you know you want to

The Frank O’Connor Festival 2008

Chris Hamilton-Emery — Wed, 24 Sep 2008 10:29:00 +0000

I’ve been back a couple of days now and only just about recovered enough to write about the time I spent at the Frank O’Connor Festival in Cork. I guess that means that I did it right! The festival started on Wed 17th Sept; I arrived late on the 19th. The full programme is here — usually the line-up comprises the shortlisted authors and as there was no official shortlist this year, I like to think that the people who read would have been on it (certainly, they deserved to be). I met so many people, heard so many stories, saw so many fantastic sights, it’s difficult to condense it all. But hopefully the following account gives you some idea of how it all went.

Friday, 19th September:

Today our short story author Charles Lambert travelled up to Cambridge and came to visit us in the office. What a treat it was for us and I’m only sorry we couldn’t spend longer with him. We did a quick video recording of him talking about his work for our website and then it was a case of rushing off into Cambridge to start my journey to Cork. I am rather ashamed to admit that this was only my second trip to Ireland, with my first one being in 1989 when I brought the New Year in in Dublin after a U2 concert (my memory of that is rather hazy), so I was greatly looking forward to being in Ireland again, as well the festival.

I was met at the airport by Eva from the Munster Literature Centre, who organise the award and the festival. She took me to my hotel, I had a quick shower and then made way way to the reading venue, The Triskel Arts Centre, which was a rather pleasant 15 mins walk through Cork city centre. The sun was setting, casting beautiful light on the painted buildings of the city, the streets were busy as shops were still open and on every lamp post down the main shopping street were banners advertising the festival, which I must say was a thrilling sight. I found my way to the alley opposite the art nouveau cinema and sat down at the back of a packed auditorium to hear the end of Mary O’Donnell‘s reading (how I wished I’d heard the beginning!). Then there was a break; folk filed out into the pub across the alleyway and I was pleased to finally meet Pat Cotter, festival director, as well as Salt authors Vanessa Gebbie, Carys Davies and Tania Hershman. Tania had read that afternoon as part of the Southword journal showcase – I was sorry to have missed her. A quick drink and catch up and then back in the hall to sit back and enjoy readings from Cork-based novelist Mary Leland and San-Francisco-based Wena Poon, who is originally from Singapore. Wena performed for 40 minutes and I wished she’d kept going – so lively and refreshing.

Far from being the end of the evening, it was sort of the start of it: in true Gaelic tradition, off we went to the pub and stayed until the wee small hours. Declan from The Stinging Fly walked me back to the hotel at some ungodly hour and just as we’d stepped out in the street told me that the last time he was out late away from home ended up in A&E. Glad he warned me, and gladder that he didn’t repeat it.

Saturday 20th September

My wedding anniversary. Called home and was rather touched (and surprised) that husband wished me a happy anniversary immediately, without any prompting. At breakfast I remembered how grumpy I am in the mornings before a decent caffeine hit and later felt the need to apologise for my bad behaviour (example: Q to me: “Do you write, Jen?’ Me, looking aghast: ‘When would I have the time to do that?!’ Grr). Vowed that the next morning I’d try to avoid happy, awake people.

Did a quick spot of shopping for children’s presents and then back to the Triskel Arts Centre to hear who had won the Sean O’Faolain Prize, which was judged this year by Nuala Ni Chonchuir. It was New jersey writer Julia Van Middlesworth, who then read her winning story ‘Daddy Dead’ — so wonderful and moving in every way; a worthy winner and a wonderful reading and end to morning.

I had to rush my lunch and couldn’t eat much of it for the next session was the panel discussion on ‘The State of the Art’, which I was taking part in, alongside Rosalind Porter, Senior Ed at Granta, Declan from the Stinging Fly and Lucy Luck, Literary Agent. It was a lively interesting discussion that could have gone on much longer. Hopefully the audience were left feeling that the short story has a future and that there are people out there supporting it and getting it out into the world, and even trying to eke out a living from selling them.

This was followed a series of mind-blowing, gut wrenching readings, packed with emotion at every level. Salt authors Carys Davies and Vanessa Gebbie kicked off. I have read their stories many times but despite knowing every word they still affected me. Carys’s voice was a bit croaky and she gave the occasional sniff – she denies that this was her being emotional, but whatever it was, it was very effective and I swear there wasn’t a dry eye on the house. After Vanessa’s reading, people were in need of a swift one in the pub before the evening session (for all the right reasons!). Alison McLeod gave a stunning performance of her story ‘Dirty Weekend’, which honestly took me a walk around the block to recover from, followed by Simon Robson (one of last year’s shortlisted authors) — he has the most wonderful voice and I could listen to him reading out a telephone directory. Julie Orringer‘s story was next, which haunted me that evening, infiltrated my dreams and I still felt the horror of it when I woke up in the morning. And lastly, Bernard MacLaverty read ‘The Clinic’ full of wit, which I must admit, I was grateful for.

We left for the pub full of every emotion possible, on a high, pumped with passion for the short story in all its wonderful forms. I went to bed at 3am.

Sunday 21 September

I woke up at 8am, head swimming, and made it down to breakfast for about 9.30. Carys and I went out into the town: she signed copies of her book in Waterstones and I had some more caffeine. Then we headed back to the hotel for lunch with Jhumpa Lahiri, winner of the Frank O’Connor Prize. It is always a pleasure meeting new authors in real life and I was pleased to get the chance to exchange a few words with her. After lunch, Vanessa and I decided that rather than go to our rooms for some sleep (which others were doing, I don’t know, some folk can’t take the pace), we’d go for a walk into town to see if we could find the City Hall where the prize ceremony was to be held that evening. The sun was shining (don’t believe the story that it rains a lot in Cork – it’s a vicious rumour designed by the people of Cork so that they can keep the place to themselves) and it was good to get a breather and stretch our legs, use our eyes instead of our ears, and take in a bit of that fine city. We stumbled across a peace festival in a park and spent an hour or so listening to music, having a bit of a jiggle and looking around. Just what the doctor ordered.

The grand finale was the awarding of the prize to Jhumpa Lahiri in the Cork City Hall by the Deputy Lord Mayor. She then read a piece from her winning book and was interviewed by Eileen Battersby. All wonderfully interesting!

I had an earlish night that evening (though it was still after closing time – I hate to miss out on things) and was up before the crack of dawn to catch my plane back home. The taxi driver asked where we’d eaten – I told him and he said, ‘oh you’ll get a good sandwich in there: nice thick bread.’ What a wonderful parting shot – how I love Cork!

I’ll put together a slide show of some of the wonderful people I met, too many to mention here. Thank you to Pat and everyone at the Munster Literature Centre for such a fantastic event and for looking after everyone so well.

Salt at the Frank O’Connor Festival

Chris Hamilton-Emery — Thu, 04 Sep 2008 10:22:00 +0000

It’s just around the corner now and Salt will be there!

On Saturday, 20th September:

“The State of the Art – a Discussion”

Chaired by Rosalind Porter Senior Editor at
Granta and including the participation of Stinging Fly editor
Declan Meade, Jen Hamilton-Emery, commissioning editor at Salt, Seamus Hosey RTE Radio producer
and organiser of the Francis McManus Awards and Lucy Luck, literary agent.
Venue: Triskel Arts Centre, Tobin Street. Time: 2.30pm. Admission: Free.

“Salt no Vinegar Please: Carys Davies & Vanessa Gebbie – A Reading”

Readings by two of the eight Salt authors longlisted for the Frank O’Connor Award this year. Salt is now
the world’s most prolific publisher of short story collections and we are delighted to be able to showcase
both the publisher and their authors Carys Davies and Vanessa Gebbie.
Venue: Triskel Arts Centre, Tobin Street. Time: 4.30pm. Admission: Free.

Frank O’Connor Prize Winner Announced

Chris Hamilton-Emery — Tue, 08 Jul 2008 09:19:00 +0000

I’ve been away for a couple of weeks so haven’t had a chance to post this update, which by now I’m sure everyone is aware of. This year in a surprise move, the Frank O’Connor judges decided to skip drawing up a shortlist but instead to go straight for the awarding of the prize. And the winner is – - – Jhumpa Lahiri’s ‘Unaccustomed Earth’.

Many congratulations to Jhumpa Lahiri.

There’s an article in The Guardian here on the winning book.

Vanessa Gebbie Interviewed on Book Addicts’ Guide to Good Books

Chris Hamilton-Emery — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 15:40:00 +0000

Eric Forbes is a book editor who lives in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. He is in love with reading good books — and with the redeeming nature of literature. He’s putting a lot of effort into tracking down and interviewing all the authors on the Frank O’Connor longlist. His latest interview is with, Vanessa Gebbie, author of Words From a Glass Bubble.

You can read Vanessa’s interview here.

Salt Invited to the Frank O’Connor Festival

Chris Hamilton-Emery — Thu, 29 May 2008 15:56:00 +0000

How chuffed am I — I’ve been invited by the wonderful people at Frank O’Connor Prize to attend their awards festival in September! They have asked me to take part in a round-table discussion on the short story. I am so pleased to be invited; what a fantastic opportunity to meet the world’s short story movers and shakers. Oh, and to see Cork!

I was interviewed the other week by Teddy Jamieson at The Herald — he’s on a mission to read a short story every day for a year and wanted to know Salt’s experience of the genre. There’s a link to the interview here, but do keep an eye on his Short Cuts blog (Salt’s Carys Davies & Charles Yu make appearances), it’s a really inspiring read.

Frank O’Connor longlister David Gaffney presents Destroy Powerpoint

Chris Hamilton-Emery — Wed, 28 May 2008 10:31:00 +0000

It’s great to be longlisted for the Frank O’Connor prize – but I bet I would have had a better chance of getting on the short list had my book Aromabingo been presented in PowerPoint format. Well, it’s not, but you can see my project Destroy Powerpoint, a set of ultra short stories about powerpoint and presented in a powerpoint format, in London on 17th June at the Bath House pub in Soho.

David Gaffney

Welcome to the Salt Frank O’Connor Prize blog!

Chris Hamilton-Emery — Tue, 27 May 2008 12:00:00 +0000

For the second year running Salt has a wide range of new authors in the world’s leading short story prize: The Frank O’Connor Prize..

Check out the prizes titles:

BRITAIN (14 authors including 8 authors from Salt Publishing)

James Waddington (BRITAIN)
Torc
Ogo Press, Honley, Holmfirth, UK

Clare Wigfall (BRITAIN)
The Loudest Sound and Nothing
Faber & Faber Ltd, London, UK

Niki Aguirre (BRITAIN)
29 Ways to Drown
Flipped Eye Publishing, Manchester, UK

Wendy Perriam (BRITAIN)
Little Marvel and Other Stories
Robert Hale Limited, London, UK

David Gaffney (BRITAIN)
Aroma Bingo
Salt Publishing Ltd, Cambridge, Uk

Carys Davies (BRITAIN)
Some New Ambush
Salt Publishing Ltd, Cambridge, Uk

Elizabeth Baines (BRITAIN)
Balancing on the Edge of the World
Salt Publishing Ltd, Cambridge, Uk

Padrika Tarrant (BRITAIN)
Broken Things
Salt Publishing Ltd, Cambridge, Uk

Linda Cracknell (BRITAIN)
The Searching Glance
Salt Publishing Ltd, Cambridge, Uk

William Guy (BRITAIN)
The I Love You Book
Salt Publishing Ltd, Cambridge, Uk

Vanessa Gebbie (BRITAIN)
Words From a Glass Bubble
Salt Publishing Ltd, Cambridge, Uk

Richard Bardsley (BRITAIN)
Body Parts – The Anatomy of Love
Salt Publishing Ltd, Cambridge, Uk

Robert Shearman (BRITAIN)
Tiny Deaths
Comma Press, Manchester, Uk

Adam Marek (BRITAIN)
Instruction Manual for Swallowing
Comma Press, Manchester, Uk