Latest issue of Short Fiction in Theory and Practice out now, with articles on Alice Munro, and Elizabeth Strout and new collaborative fiction from Rupert Loydell and Amy Lilwall. There is also an interview with Tessa Hadley and a review of new books on editing. Graham Mort’s story, ‘Emporium’ explores the short story as ‘humble’ fiction from a practice-based perspective, introducing the topic ahead of the forthcoming ENSFR conference on this topic.
Narratives of Community in the Black British Short Story
We are pleased to announce the publication of Bettina Jansen’s new book, Narratives of Community in the Black British Short Story, which has just come out with Palgrave. More details can be found here.
Short Fiction in Theory and Practice Special Issues
Short Fiction in Theory and Practice 7.2 and 8.1 & 2 are all available now. 7.2 is a special issue on ‘Haunting in the Short Story’, with articles from the conference held at the University of Angers in 2015. The double issue 8. 1 & 2 contains articles from the ENSFR annual conference held at Edge Hill in 2016 on the theme ‘”Child of the Century”: Reading and Writing Short Fiction Across Media. It also contains an exclusive translation by Lyn Marven of a story by German writer Roman Ehrlich, and an interview with him by Lyn Marven and Andrew Plowright.
9.1, a general issue, is in preparation for early 2019.
Jennifer J. Smith, The American Short Story Cycle (Edinburgh UP, 2017)
The American Short Story Cycle spans two centuries to tell the history of a genre that includes both major and marginal authors, from Washington Irving through William Faulkner to Jhumpa Lahiri. The short story cycle rose and proliferated because its form compellingly renders the uncertainties that emerge from the twin pillars of modern America culture: individualism and pluralism. Short story cycles reflect how individuals adapt to change, whether it is the railroad coming to the small town in Sherwood Anderson’s Winesburg, Ohio (1919) or social media revolutionizing language in Jennifer Egan’s A Visit from the Goon Squad (2010). Combining new formalism in literary criticism with scholarship in American Studies, this book gives a name and theory to the genre that has fostered the aesthetics of fragmentation, as well as recurrence, that characterise fiction today.
Short Fiction in Theory & Practice 6.2
Short Fiction in Theory & Practice 6.2 includes articles on plot, on auto ethnography and writing short fiction by practitioners David Jauss, Alex Plasatis and Michael Stewart. There are also critical articles on Maeve Brennan, Angela Carter and Alice Munro, an interview with Kirsty Gunn, book reviews and more.