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.
While early reviews routinely likened her work to that of Henry James, by 1923, Mayne was called ““the only short-story writer capable of succeeding Katherine Mansfield”
Continue reading “In Quest of Forgotten Yellow Book Writer Ethel Colburn Mayne”
The annual Edge Hill Prize awards £10,000 to the author of what the judges consider to be the best published short-story collection from the UK or Ireland. This year’s shortlist includes previous winner Kevin Barry, plus four debut authors. It also includes two short story cycles. Full list below:
Small and independent publishers have made a strong showing. There’s a huge amount of variety amongst these collections, ranging from tales of migrant fishermen (Plasatis) to postmodern historical fiction (Lloyd) and a magic realist version of life on a council estate (Ash). The winner will be announced early in 2022 – hopefully at a live event in the UK.
Some one said to me the other day, ‘I don’t get Alice Munro.’ It’s okay, I told her. Continue reading “Alice Munro in the Classroom”
Shelley Day has been named the winner of the 2020 Edge Hill Prize for her debut collection, What Are You Like. Ruby Cowling won the Readers’ Choice Prize for another debut collection, This Paradise.
We are pleased to announce the publication of number 72 of the Journal of the Short Story in English/Cahiers de la nouvelle, devoted to Elizabeth Spencer. This issue is dedicated to our colleagues specialized in American literature, Michel Bandry, Danièle Pitavy-Souques and Claude Maisonnat (who authored one of the articles), but also to Spencer herself, who passed away in December 2019. Two previously unpublished short stories and two interviews are collected in this issue. Three writers have also agreed to share their memories of Spencer.
You will find below the table of contents, as well as links to the websites of the Presses Universitaires de Rennes and OpenEdition, where the beginning of the articles can be accessed.
The “Short stories and short forms” team of the CIRPaLL laboratory has received funding from the Erasmus + Strategic Partnerships program. This European research program aims to promote transnational projects set up by networks of teacher-researchers in Europe in order to develop and share innovative practices in the fields of education, training and youth.
With the “Short Forms Beyond Borders (SFBB)” project, we intend to work collaboratively on short forms as a tool for cultural, educational and social mediation in Europe. The relevance of short forms is becoming more and more visible in today’s society. Brevity is becoming a way of doing things, a question of time and style, indeed of thinking. Examples of short forms include short videos, text messages, short stories, Instagram stories, sound fragments, television series, short speeches, sales pitches, news briefs, slogans etc. Continue reading ““Short forms beyond borders” (SFBB): AN ERASMUS+ Strategic Partnerships Project”
The Edge Hill Prize 2020 for a published short story collection from the UK or Ireland has just been announced. £10,000 will be awarded to the winner in November. The collections are:
Organized by the Department of American Studies, University of Innsbruck, Austria and the Society for the Study of the American Short Story (SSASS)
Gudrun M. Grabher
University of Innsbruck / Austria
James Nagel
University of Georgia / USA
jnagel@uga.edu
The Department of American Studies at the University of Innsbruck, Austria, and the Society for the Study of the American Short Story (SSASS) invite proposals for papers and presentations at an international symposium to be held in Innsbruck, Austria, October 15-17, 2020. The venue is the Humanities Building of the University of Innsbruck at Innrain 52. Various hotels in Innsbruck within walking distance from the conference venue will offer special conference rates at around € 125,– for double rooms. Breakfast is included in the price. The conference fee is € 160, and it includes two lunches and two receptions. The deadline for submissions is June 15, 2020. All attendees must register for the conference by August 1, 2020. Please register online.
CONTRIBUTIONS
In this symposium, we look forward to discussing the American short story from various perspectives and in a variety of contexts. A central focus will be the reconsideration of the history of the genre through the inclusion of new writers from all racial and ethnic groups, the development of innovative types of stories (flash fiction, micro-fiction, and other forms), and the recovery of fiction published in languages other than English. Close readings of stories by any American author are always appropriate as are broad discussions of historical periods and movements. Audiovisual equipment will be available for the symposium.
ORGANIZATION
The symposium is sponsored by the Department of American Studies at the University of Innsbruck and the Society for the Study of the American Short Story. The directors are Gudrun M. Grabher, Chair of the American Studies Department, and James Nagel, Distinguished Professor Emeritus of English at the University of Georgia.
SUBMISSION
In addition to traditional panels, with three 20-minute papers, the symposium will also hold discussion forums, seminar conversations, and roundtable sessions. Fully-formed panels or discussion groups are especially welcome as are sessions organized by author societies. Creative writers are also invited to present work in progress or to discuss the genre of the short story.
Proposals need be only a single page with one paragraph that describes the subject of the paper and another that gives the credentials of the speaker.
Deadline for submissions is June 15, 2020.
For submissions, please go to the conference website and follow the instructions:
https://webapp.uibk.ac.at/ssass2020/
We are delighted to present the programme for this year’s ENSFR Conference in Montpellier:
Short Fiction as Humble Fiction
An International Conference organised by EMMA (Etudes Montpelliéraines du Monde Anglophone) with ENSFR (The European Network for Short Fiction Research)
17-18-19 October 2019
Université Paul-Valéry Montpellier3, France
Site Saint Charles 2
Auditorium & Salle Kouros
Convenors: Jean-Michel Ganteau & Christine Reynier
Thursday 17 October
9h45-10h15 Welcome
Auditorium
10h15 Opening of the Conference
10h30 Keynote lecture
Chair: Christine Reynier
Elke D’hoker (University of Leuven, Belgium)
Humbling the Human: Animals in Contemporary Short Fiction
11h30 Coffee break (Jardin d’hiver)
12h Parallel panels
Ecocritical Echoes (Auditorium)
Chair: Judith Misrahi-Barak
Xavier Le Brun (University of Angers, France)
Malcolm Lowry’s Humble Hypotyposes in Hear Us O Lord from Heaven Thy Dwelling Place (1961)
Diane Leblond (University of Lorraine, France)
Organic Connections and Creatures of Compost in Ali Smith’s “The Beholder” (2015) and Daisy
Johnson’s “Starver” (2016): When Humility Reframes the Ambition of Short Fiction
Humble Details (Salle Kouros)
Chair: Julián Jiménez Heffernan
Maxwell Donaldson (University of Aberdeen, UK)
The “Little” Things: An Exploration of the Use of Gesture in J. D. Salinger’s Nine Stories
Etienne Février (University Toulouse Jean-Jaurès, France)
Humble Ambitions: Steven Milhauser’s Short Fiction
13h Lunch Break
14h30 Parallel panels
Invisibilities 1 (Auditorium)
Chair: Elke D’hoker
Julián Jiménez Heffernan (University of Córdoba, Spain)
The Humiliating Thing: Infrastructural Storytelling in Henry James’s “Julia Bride”
Emmanuel Vernadakis (University of Angers, France)
Tourism, Tourists and the Humble in E. M. Forster’s “The Story of the Siren” (1920)
Emma Liggins (Manchester Metropolitan University, UK)
Haunted Space and the Inescapable Past in May Sinclair’s Uncanny Stories (1923)
Victoria Margree (University of Brighton, UK)
Imitation and Innovation in the Ghost Stories of Eleanor Scott
Humble Women (Salle Kouros)
Chair: Bryony Randall
Diane Drouin (Sorbonne University, France)
“A ridiculous little accident”: Mina Loy’s Forgotten Short Stories
Elena Gelasi (University of Cyprus)
The Lonely Voice of Women. The Humblest among the Humble. From Freeman to Simpson
Ena Panda (University of Delhi, India)
Representation of Alienation in Short Stories Written by Contemporary Francophone Women
Writers of Québec
Ailsa Cox (Edge Hill University, UK)
An Extremely Private Literary Giant
16h15 Coffee break (Jardin d’hiver)
Auditorium
16h45
Short Story Competition
Short Story Readings 1
by Cormac James, Ashutosh Bhardwaj and Ailsa Cox
Jardin d’hiver
18h Cocktail
Friday 18 October
10h Auditorium
Humble War Stories
Chair: Isabelle Brasme
Elsa Högberg (Uppsala University, Sweden)
‘Unaccustomed to the ear, primitive harmonies of the world’: Katherine Mansfield’s Cries
Lisa Feklistova (University of Cambridge, UK)
‘Humble struggles’ —Mundane Routine in the Short Story in the Wake of the Great War
Lucy Durneen (University of Cambridge, UK)
“Walking back into your besieged life”: War Stories, Humbly Told
11h30 Coffee break (Jardin d’hiver)
12h Keynote lecture
Chair : Jean-Michel Ganteau
Ann-Marie Einhaus (Northumbria University, UK)
Scraps of Paper? First World War Short Fiction and the Ephemeral
13h Lunch (Salle Médicis)
14h30 Parallel panels
Migrants and Refugees (Auditorium)
Chair: Emma Liggins
Judith Misrahi-Barak (University Paul-Valéry Montpellier 3, France)
The Writing of the Refugee: Re-examining ‘bare life’ in Edwidge Danticat’s Short Stories from
‘Children of the Sea’ to ‘Without Inspection’
Carol Millner (Curtin University, Western Australia)
Trace: Short Fiction and the Western Australian Migrant Experience
Laura Gallon (University of Sussex, UK)
Short Stories & Recipes: A Reflection on Food, Gender and Genre
Ordinary Lives (Salle Kouros)
Chair : Emmanuel Vernadakis
Florence Marie (Université de Pau et des Pays de l’Adour, France)
Dorothy Richardson’s Humble Short Fiction
Bryony Randall (University of Glasgow, UK)
‘Partly in Prose’: Woolf’s Humble Cutbush
Mallory Alexandre (University Paul-Valéry Montpellier 3, France)
“My roots go down to the depths of the world”: Virginia Woolf’s Humble Short Fiction
16h Coffee break (Jardin d’hiver)
Auditorium
16h30 Short Story Readings 2
20h Dinner in town
Saturday 19 October
9h30 Parallel panels
Regional and National Identities (Auditorium)
Chair: Ann Marie Einhaus
Alda Correia (New University, Lisbon, Portugal)
Regionalist Short Fiction as Humble Fiction
Gérald Préher (UC Lille, France)
Shirley Ann Grau’s “The Empty Night”: The Humble Story Behind a Pulitzer-Prize Winner
Kritika Chettri (University of North Bengal, India)
The Nepali Short Story and its Humble Conflicts
Invisibilities 2 (Salle Kouros)
Chair: Xavier Le Brun
Leila Haghshenas (University Paul-Valéry Montpellier 3, France)
Humbled Selves in Leonard Woolf’s Short Fiction
Tina Terradillos (University Paul-Valéry Montpellier 3, France)
Radclyffe Hall’s Short Fiction: A Humble Ethics of the Flawed
Sylvie Maurel (University Toulouse Jean-Jaurès, France)
From Minority to Humility: Jean Rhys’s Short Fiction
11h Coffee break (Jardin d’hiver)
11h30 Parallel panels
Specific Forms (Auditorium)
Chair: Ailsa Cox
Ashutosh Bhardwaj (Indian Institute of Advanced Study, Shimla, India)
Conversations between the Story and the Novel: Reflections on the Self and the Other
Jane Alexander (University of Edinburgh, UK)
Writing chronic illness in short fiction
Readers (Salle Kouros)
Chair: Sandrine Sorlin
Amanda Bigler (University of Lille, France)
Empathic Second-Person Narrators in Short Fiction
Dan Powell (University of Leicester, UK)
The shape of the British Short Story in the Mid-twentieth Century: Developing a Preclosural
Methodology for Writing Short Fiction
John D. Rutter (University of Central Lancashire, UK)
The Death of the Reader
13h Lunch (Salle Médicis)
Tour of Montpellier
Musée Fabre
Organising Committee
Lynn Blin, Alice Borrego, Charlotte Chassefière, Jean-Michel Ganteau, Laura Lainvae, Xavier Le Brun, Maroua Mannai, Katia Marcellin, Judith Misrahi-Barak, Christine Reynier, Tina Terradillos
https://emma.www.univ-montp3.fr/
