The European Network for Short Fiction Research was established in 2013 with the aim of fostering and promoting the study of short fiction in European universities and in interaction with short fiction writers. After an inaugural meeting early in 2014, the ENSFR has organized annual conferences as well as sponsored several other study days and events. This website aims to be an interactive platform for sharing research, expertise, ideas and information about short fiction in its diversity of linguistic traditions and forms.
Dear ENSFR members,
Over the last couple of months we have set up a new communication group to enhance the network’s ability to share information about events, publications and call for papers.
If you have any information on events, publications and call for papers that you would like to be shared and posted on the ENSFR’s social media channels or/and website please email: ensfrcg@gmail.com.
Best wishes,
Paul Knowles (ENSFR Communication Officer)
The ENSFR reading group
The ENSFR reading group aims to provide a digital space for early career researchers and postgraduate students to come together and discuss classic and new short fiction. The reading group is co-coordinated by Maddie Sinclair (University of Warwick), Paul Knowles (University of Manchester) and Ines Gstrein (University of Innsbruck).
The group usually meets once per month during term time on Zoom. The link to the meeting room is circulated in advance via a mailing list, together with the set reading for the next meeting. For each meeting, there is a short story to read. There are also some questions to guide our reading and get the discussion started.
New members are always welcome! To sign up for the reading group, please send an email to the contact email address of the reading group: ensfrreadinggroup[at]gmail.com
Blue Short Stories
Special Issue N° 85 of the Journal of the Short Story in English (JSSE)
Guest editors : Bénédicte Meillon, Université d’Angers, and Frédérique Spill, Université Jules Vernes Picardie
Since the turn of the century, the stakes inherent in climate change have turned out to be indissoluble from the threats affecting coastal and marine ecosystems. Scientists around the world have provided evidence that global warming is interlinked with rising sea levels, with the warming and acidification of the ocean, with the dwindling of fish populations, the bleaching of coral reefs, and with an increasing number of endangered marine species. As a matter of fact, we have come to realize that the future of our predominantly blue Earth and its myriad co-dwellers hinges in great part on the blueing of our minds. Following the recent “blue turn” in the humanities and ecocriticism, which seeks to remedy the rampant “ocean deficit disorder” diagnosed by Dan Brayton and to draw our attention beyond “green,” land-based issues to “blue” ones, the call for papers for this volume arises from the awareness that blue short stories deserve more attention that they have been getting. This special issue of the JSSE will consequently focus on blue short stories, i.e. short stories dealing with marine matters and, more largely, aquatic and terraqueous beings and places in ways that depart from anthropocentric land-based studies and frameworks. The overall aim is to explore short stories that help us venture into largely uncharted dimensions of experience and knowledge, and that may thus promote urgently needed ways of blueing our perception, worldviews, and ways of life. Continue reading “CFP Blue Short Stories — Special Issue N° 85 of the Journal of the Short Story in English (JSSE) — Deadline for proposals 15 December 2024”
Conference in Celebration of Flannery O’Connor’s 100th Birthday Nicolaus Copernicus University; Toruń, Poland; March 25-26, 2025. Click here for First Call for Papers. Email inquiries to Professors Grzegorz Koneczniak (gregorex at umk.pl) and Mirosława Buchholtz (mirabuch at umk.pl). (Proposals Due November 15, 2024)
“The Persistence of the Short Story: Traditions and Futures” — 10-12 July 2024, University of Mainz, Germany
The Society for the Study of the American Short Story, The American Literature Association, and the Obama Institute for Transnational American Studies, in collaboration with the ENSFR, have organized a three-day seminar series on the short story.
Here is the link to the programme: https://www.obama-institute.com/shortstoryconferencemainz2024/