Available online here: http://www.vice.com/en_uk/read/king-of-the-wild-frontier-0000346-v21n6 I recently picked up the Fiction issue of Vice magazine. http://www.vice.com/magazine/21/6 Recommend these annual issues all of which are available online. They have a tendency to lean toward the Lad/Ladette market but contain some interesting works. Especially from the film/fiction crossover area. This year’s issue also contains Nabokov’s unpublished Lolita screenplay and…
My Book Grid: 1975- present
Interesting exercise came out of class last night. Hard to recall some of this and I genuinely cannot remember reading anything but web design manuals and music magazines for at least five years at NTU…scary.. Feel like Rumpelstiltskin.
Poetry: A bad day in the comfort zone?
There have been three Monday lectures on the course and two of them have been by poets and in addition a first Poetry tutorial session with Rory Waterman ( I have since requested changing to part-time so that will be last Poetry session until next year). I have had a hefty poetic boot up the arse…
Daily Short: Lionel Shriver – Kilifi Creek
This review has been revised. I felt it was too easy to criticise a writer on one piece of work with no ‘back-story’. I have done that and for me it didn’t get any better in fact…. Lionel Shriver – Killifi Creek I have now re-read the original short story and I have flicked through…
Daily Short: Bernard MacLaverty – A Foreign Dignitary
In ‘Friendship: 12 masterpieces of short fiction’ for John McCarthy, Ryan Publishing Co. Ltd; First Edition edition (1990) Also collected in: “A Foreign Dignitary,in Best Short Stories 1989, edited by GilesGordon and David Hughes. 1989; as The Best English Short Stories 1989, 1989. Walking the Dog and Other Stories. 1994. A tricky one this. I have…
Daily Short: Ron Hansen- Playland – 1989
I had the idea of reading at least one short story a day. It sort of working and I have managed three so far this week. The first on Tuesday was Ron Hansen’s ‘Funland’ from ‘Nebraska’ a collection of short stories published in 1989. I purchased it at the time because of the cover which…
Poem for poetry day – My Father’s Crashes
A poem I started in 2010 and finished yesterday… My Father’s Crashes We could tell by the engine When my father’s truck was home. The diesel engine would vibrate The windows as he reversed in. My mother would boil the kettle at 5pm Knowing he would arrive. Three times in five years he…
Edwin Smith photograph commission
35 Hallam’s Lane, Chilwell near Nottingham, 1937 A strange day. I was going to go to studio and write all day but I got knocked sideways by this request. Apple and Snakes and R.I.B.A. have commissioned me to write a poem on one or more of the photographs on show at RIBA from the Edwin…
Short Story and CW useful links
‘I only write when I am inspired. Fortunately I am inspired at 9 o’clock every morning.’ William Faulkner Short Stops website http://shortstops.info/ Long Story, Short website http://longstoryshort.squarespace.com/ Blot the skrip blog ( Dr. Stephen Carver) http://blottheskrip.wordpress.com/ Lorrie Moore Interview Paris Review http://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/510/the-art-of-fiction-no-167-lorrie-moore
Joseph O’Connor and Kurt Vonnegut on writing
Kurt Vonnegut Eight rules for writing fiction: 1. Use the time of a total stranger in such a way that he or she will not feel the time was wasted. 2. Give the reader at least one character he or she can root for. 3. Every character should want something, even if it is only…