Why aren’t more short stories about happiness? Writers are a grim bunch, by and large. If there’s a slough of misery they can send their characters into, chances are they ...
There’s an art to ending a short story. A good finish leaves you feeling it was there all along, its signature running through everything like the words in a stick ...
Aldous Huxley reckoned science and literature were alike because both observe the world and attempt to interpret it in words. Fair enough, but when science is described in literature, there’s ...
It’s the first time I’ve been to the Imperial War Museum since I was 11 and I’m a bit disorientated, so I ask a member of staff where the Once ...
It’s official: Amazon now sells more e-books in the US than it does paperbacks. The gradual disappearance of the physical book could be the long-awaited solution to that old problem: ...
I bought a new diary today. One of my New Year’s resolutions, probably like thousands of other people across the country, was to get into the discipline of writing a ...
Money and sport go together. In the last few weeks, as the credibility of cricket wobbled under allegations of corruption and match-fixing , I’ve been reading the funny and satirically ...
After reading the excellent collection of stories in this month’s North London issue, I’ve been trying to think of other short stories I’ve read set in North London. It was tougher ...
It’s not often I’ve heard an audience at a fiction event let out a collective gasp of horror. It’s a thrilling sound, and last week it reinvigorated my passion for ...
My short story diet this week has been An Elegy for Easterly, the debut collection by Petina Gappah, published last year and winner of the Guardian First Book Award. The ...