The first National Short Story Week is nearly upon us. The idea is to focus attention on short story writers, publishers and events and promote literary events and publications nationally and locally. It's up to you what you do about it, so you can organise your own events. The brainchild of audio producer Ian Skillicorn, the aims of the Week have the support of an independent steering group composed of experts in writing, editing, publishing, teaching, producing, broadcasting and performing. Ian, the Week's director was the founder of Short Story Radio and he produces and broadcasts short stories and supports short story writers.
The short story has been a much-neglected form for a long time and I'm glad to see it's becoming popular again. Although there have always been multitudes of writers and would-be writers beavering away and sending their stories out to magazines, there are more writers than outlets for their stories, many of which wing their way back fairly quickly. Publishers of short story anthologies are thin on the ground too, so it's all very well encouraging people to get to work on them if there aren't enough outlets for them.
I expect the Week is as much about reading as writing, so what's your favourite short story? Let's have a vote on it. Mine was ever Oscar Wilde's
The Story of Dorian Gray followed closely by Franz Kafka's
Metamorphosis.
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| Writer Katie Fforde, short story week patron |
National Short Story Week takes place from Monday, 22 November until Sunday, 28 November and you can learn more about it and how you can get involved on
http://www.nationalshortstoryweek.org.uk/ They have a list of magazines that publish short stories, which you can search for online.
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