The Modern Short Story and Magazine Culture, 1880-1950, edited by Elke D’hoker and Chris Mourant

This collection of original essays highlights the intertwined fates of the modern short story and periodical culture in the period 1880–1950, the heyday of magazine short fiction in Britain. Through case studies that focus on particular magazines, short stories and authors, chapters investigate the presence, status and functioning of short stories within a variety of periodical publications – highbrow and popular, mainstream and specialised, middlebrow and avant-garde. Examining the impact of social and publishing networks on the production, dissemination and reception of short stories, it foregrounds the ways in which magazines and periodicals shaped conversations about the short story form and prompted or provoked writers into developing the genre.

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Short Fiction in Theory and Practice 10.2: Short Fiction as Humble Fiction

Short Fiction in Theory and Practice  10.2 special issue on Short Fiction as Humble Fiction, guest-edited by Christine Reynier, following the ENSFR conference at Montpellier in October 2019  is now available from Intellect Press.  It also includes an interview with Sarah Hall, book reviews by Corinne Bigot and an interview with film-maker Eric Steel on his adaption of  David Bezmozgis’ ‘Minyan’ .

ARTICLES

 Editorial :’The power of short fiction as a humble genre’

CHRISTINE REYNIER

 ‘Humbling the human: Posthuman explorations in contemporary short fiction’

ELKE D’HOKER

‘The singular effect of brevity: Why Katherine Mansfield’s “The Fly” could not have been a novel’

LISA FEKLISTOVA

‘Regionalist short fiction as humble fiction’

ALDA CORREIA

‘Tourism, tourists, humility and the humble in E. M. Forster’s “The Story of the Siren” (1920)’

EMMANUEL VERNADAKIS

‘Humility and the humble: A reading of the Nepali short stories of Maheshbikram Shah’

KRITIKA CHETTRI

‘”The extremely private literary giant”: Alice Munro’s poetics of humility’

AILSA COX

JSSE Issue n.72 – Elizabeth Spencer

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.

Continue reading “JSSE Issue n.72 – Elizabeth Spencer”

Short Fiction in Theory and Practice 10.1

Short Fiction in Theory and Practice 10.1 contains original fiction by Zoe Lambert on the theme of illness and caring, plus co-written fiction from Amy Lilwall and Rupert Loydell. There are articles on writers including Agatha Christie, Margot Lanagan, Flannery O’Connor and Patrick Gale, plus an unpublished short story by the British writer Carl Tighe, who recently died from Covid-19, accompanied by an appreciation by Elizabeth Baines. Paul March-Russell reviews Borders and Border Crossings in the Contemporary British Short Story and Moy McCrory reviews Being Various, the anthology of new Irish Irish short stories edited by Lucy Caldwell.  And you can find out about how oral ghost stories mingle the discourse of fact and fiction.

10.2, coming early in 2021, will be a special issue on Short Fiction as Humble Fiction, and will include an interview with Sarah Hall.

“Short forms beyond borders” (SFBB): AN ERASMUS+ Strategic Partnerships Project

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”

Edge Hill Prize shortlist 2020.

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:

  • Paris Syndrome by Lucy Sweeney Byrne (Banshee Press)
  • This Paradise by Ruby Cowling (Boiler House Press)
  • What Are You Like by Shelley Day (Postbox Press)
  • Sudden Traveller by Sarah Hall (Faber)
  • This Way to Departures by Linda Mannheim (Influx Press)

Call for paper: Identity, exclusion and resistance. The representation of the character in the micro-story

The next issue of Microtextualidades (n. 9, May 2021) is now open to the submission of contributions.

Coordinators: Eunice Ribeiro y Xaquín Núñez Sabarís

Deadline: 15/01/2021

(Spanish version below)

“The characters in the micro-story walk in profile.” This sentence by Andrés Neuman, extracted from his ten micro-notes on this narrative form, attributes to the protagonists of the mini-fiction a bodily or identitary inconsistency, in accordance with the diegetic ellipsis of hyper-brief stories and the aesthetics of post-modernity.

Characters that evaporate, disarticulate or become ghosts or animated objects, shadows that dilute as the minimal story of the minuscule fiction vanishes, are common in the repertoire of microtextualities.

This representative dimension of the character is often accompanied by cultural imaginaries (the prevalence of middle-aged characters) or political and social demands, consistent with the subversive position that the micro-narrative has had at its origins and which it has not lost in its process of canonisation.  Its rebellious nature has made it a prone space for cultural resistance. For this reason, these characters who move in profile frequently represent beings marked by failure, marginality or rejection, from an individual or collective point of view. Poverty, sexism, racism or different forms of exclusion are also part of the thematic concerns of hyper-brief literature.

Related to this, and by virtue of its permeable format, it has also been a genre with great effectiveness in addressing issues of social demand, such as those mentioned above. The collective volumes of the micro-story have constituted a sub-genre in themselves, sponsored by associations, institutions or writers’ groups that focus on a particular theme. If criticism of micro-storytelling has studied its educational effectiveness in promoting and consolidating reading or literary competence, the emergence of mini-fiction has also demonstrated its relevance for carrying out a pedagogy of strong social, political and cultural commitment.

This monographic issue therefore aims to focus on the representation of characters’ identities in the micro-story, both from the point of view of its narrative materialization and from the social and political positions that intervene in its different repertoires.

 

 

Petición de colaboracionesIdentidad, exclusión y resistencia. La representación del personaje en el microrrelato. Número 9, mayo 2021)

Coordinadores: Eunice Ribeiro y Xaquín Núñez Sabarís

Fecha límite para el envío de manuscritos: 15/01/2021

“Los personajes del microcuento caminan de perfil”. Esta sentencia de Andrés Neuman, extraída de sus diez microapuntes sobre esta forma narrativa, atribuye a los protagonistas de la minficción una inconsistencia corporal o identatitaria, acorde con la elipsis diegética de las narraciones hiperbreves y la estética de la posmodernidad.

Personajes que se evaporan, se desarticulan o convierten en fantasmas u objetos animados, sombras que se diluyen a medida que se desvanece la historia mínima de la ficción minúscula son habituales en el repertorio de las microtextualidades.

Esta dimensión representativa del personaje viene acompañada, a menudo, de imaginarios culturales (la prevalencia de personajes de media edad) o reivindicaciones políticas y sociales, acordes con la posición subversiva que la minificción ha tenido en sus orígenes y que no ha perdido en su proceso de canonización.  Su naturaleza rebelde ha propiciado que sea un espacio proclive para la resistencia cultural. Por ello, esos personajes que se mueven de perfil representan frecuentemente seres marcados por el fracaso, la marginalidad o el rechazo, desde un punto de vista individual o colectivo. La pobreza, el sexismo, el racismo o las diferentes formas de exclusión forman también parte de las preocupaciones temáticas de la literatura hiperbreve.

Relacionado con ello, y en virtud de su permeable formato, ha sido, además, un género con una gran eficacia para abordar cuestiones de reivindicación social, como las señaladas anteriormente. Los volúmenes colectivos del microrrelato han constituido un subgénero en sí mismo, auspiciados por asociaciones, instituciones o agrupaciones de escritores que se centran en un determinado tema. Si la crítica sobre el microrrelato ha estudiado su eficacia educativa, en la promoción y consolidación de la competencia lectora o literaria, la irrupción de la minificción ha acreditado también su relevancia para llevar a cabo una pedagogía de fuerte compromiso social, político y cultural.

Este número monográfico pretende, consecuentemente, centrarse en la representación de las identidades de los personajes en el microrrelato, tanto desde el punto de vista de su materialización narrativa, como desde las posiciones sociales y políticas que intervienen en sus diferentes repertorios.

 

Link to CFP website here.