On November 6, 2025, the ENSFR and PesText – International Literary and Cultural Festival hosted an online workshop on “Flash in Translation: Uncanny Objects”. The event was jointly organised by Robert Smid, Paul Knowles, Ines Gstrein and Ildikó Hepp. Eleven writers from four countries – Hungary, Austria, the United Kingdom and France – were invited…
What can fictional representations of blocked short story writers teach us about writer’s block and what causes a writer to feel blocked? Andrea Marzocchi discusses these questions with Aaron Colton, Associate Teaching Professor in the Department of English at Emory University in Atlanta, and author of Writing Through Writer’s Block: Lessons from Modern American Fiction,…
1. Can you remember the first short story you ever read? I remember thinking Kafka’s The Metamorphosis was ridiculous. Later I fell in love with short fiction and thought differently about Kafka’s work, considering story but also themes related to society, working life and family. Ideas or moments in reading often inspire my writing. For…
Which short-story last made you cry – for good reasons? Good question, because I thought I would be able to answer it easily. I thought about anthologies and collections and favourite writers and came up blank. I reread Jamaica Kincaid’s ‘Blackness’ and remained dry eyed. The short story is my favourite form, and I cry…
Special Issue of The Journal of the Short Story in English 89 (Autumn 2027) Deadline for abstract submissions: 1 June 2026. Full details here From its roots in the oral tradition, the short story genre has continually adapted to societal and cultural factors. Although undergoing mutations which have fuelled the vitality of critical debate and research, “the…
What can short stories expect from readers? I expect you to remember that I am not a novel. If I say, ‘the queen died, then the king died of grief’, don’t ask what happened before or after. I shine a light on the particular, an event, a character, a time. The rest remains in the…