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

Katherine Mansfield and Children: Call for Papers

KATHERINE MANSFIELD AND CHILDREN

Editors
Gerri Kimber, University of Northampton, UK
and
Todd Martin, Huntington University, USA

Virginia Woolf once remarked that Katherine Mansfield had ‘a kind of childlikeness somewhere which has been much disfigured, but still exists’. This ‘childlikeness’ is indeed a facet of Mansfield’s personality which permeates every aspect of her personal and creative life. It is present in her mature fiction, where some of her most well-known and accomplished stories, such as ‘Prelude’ and ‘At the Bay’, have children as protagonists; it is present in her early poetry, which includes a collection of poems for children intended for publication; it is also present in her juvenilia, where many of the stories she wrote from an early age for school magazines and other publications, feature children. As Tracy Miao notes of her mature fiction, ‘in Mansfield’s modelling of her child artists […] there is more than a simple “childlikeness” […] but a serious thought process on art and the artist’.

Even as an adult, Mansfield’s love of the miniature, her delight in children in general, her fascination with dolls, all feature in her personal writing. Her relationship with John Middleton Murry was characterised by their mutual descriptions of themselves as little children fighting against a corrupt world. Alluding to their innocence, Mansfield once wrote to Murry: ‘My grown up self sees us like two little children who have been turned out into the garden’. Years later, speaking of Murry’s writing, she notes, ‘Take care of yourself – my beloved child with all these wild men about throwing stones and striking’.

Essays which address any aspect of the concept of Mansfield and children will be considered for this volume. Subjects might include (but are not limited to):

• Children in Mansfield’s fiction
• Children in Mansfield’s poetry
• Mansfield’s juvenilia – poetry and /or prose
• Mansfield’s early years
• The ‘childlike’ relationship between Mansfield and Murry
• Mansfield’s pregnancies
• Mansfield’s love of the miniature
• Mansfield and dolls
• The childlike in Mansfield’s personal writing
• Mansfield’s ‘innocent eye’ (John Ruskin)

Please email submissions of c.6000 words, including endnotes, formatted in Word and in MHRA style*, 12 pt. Times New Roman, double line-spaced, with a 100-word abstract + 5 keywords & 50-word biography, to the editorial team at kms@katherinemansfieldsociety.org

PLEASE NOTE: ALL SUBMISSIONS WILL AUTOMATICALLY BE ENTERED FOR OUR ANNUAL ESSAY PRIZE COMPETITION UNLESS AUTHORS INDICATE OTHERWISE.

*An MHRA Style Guide is available on the Katherine Mansfield Society website: http://www.katherinemansfieldsociety.org/yearbook-katherine-mansfield-studies/

Creative Writing
We welcome creative submissions of poetry, short stories, and creative essays on the general theme of Katherine Mansfield. Please send submissions for consideration, accompanied by a brief (50 words) biography, to kms@katherinemansfieldsociety.org.

DEADLINE FOR SUBMISSIONS: 31 AUGUST 2020

Short Fiction in Theory & Practice 9.2 and call for papers.

Vol. 9.2. of the peer-reviewed journal Short Fiction in Theory and Practice is out now with articles on A.M. Homes, Thomas Harris, Lydia Davies, Samuel Beckett, Carson McCullers, Anton Chekhov and more. Plus Jonathan Crane reflects on realism in his own fiction. Robert M. Luscher on the American short story cycle, Felicity Skelton on Canadian fiction and Sarah Whitehead on Katherine Mansfield and Periodical Culture; and Ailsa Cox interviews Lucy Wood, the Cornish-based author of Diving Belles and The Sing  of the Shore.

We welcome submissions of articles, book reviews, interviews, reports and translations on any aspect of short-story writing.  For more information contact Ailsa Cox at coxa@edgehill.ac.uk.

Tinakori: Critical Journal of the Katherine Mansfield Society 

Tinakori:

Critical Journal of the Katherine Mansfield Society 

Editors: Kym Brindle and Karen D’Souza

‘But this is all a dream you see. I want to come home – to come home’

Letter from Mansfield to Murry [18 March 1918]

 

Home figures as an ambivalent construct in the writing of Katherine Mansfield. This special issue of Tinakori looks to explore issues of space and belonging in Mansfield’s work. We seek proposals exploring the ways in which aspects of identity in Mansfield’s work are articulated by engagement with both material and emotive notions of home. What is the significance of home and conversely homelessness for Mansfield’s creative imagination? Rosemary Marangoly George stresses that ‘fictionality is an intrinsic attribute of home’, suggesting that ‘home is also the imagined location that can be more readily fixed in a mental landscape than in actual geography’. This issue will focus on intersections between desires for home and the social reality and implications and consequences for domestic space for both men and women. In what ways do Mansfield’s stories contextualize debates about issues of identity and space and place? What impact do representations of home have for characters (and readers) in the quest for meaning?

Suggested topics include, but are not limited to:

·      Place and space

·      Exile and homelessness

·      Travel and home

·      Nostalgia for home

·      Memories of home

·      Imagined homes

·      Thresholds

·      Family and home

·      Mourning and trauma

·      Domesticity: pleasures and unhappiness

·      Privacy

·      Architecture

·      Furnishings and ornament

Please e-mail abstracts of 500 words to brindlek@edgehill.ac.uk  and dsouzak@edgehill.ac.uk by 12 July 2019

Completed essays of 5,000 -6,000 words (including endnotes) in MHRA format  due 1 November 2019.

Tinakori: Critical Journal of the Katherine Mansfield Society is an official online series, recognised by the British Library and with its own ISSN number: ISSN 2514-6106.
All essays submitted will be double peer-reviewed prior to acceptance.