Monthly archives: April 2019

5 posts

Flash Fiction Slam 2017 winner Phil Olsen on impressing the judges

At The Northern Short Story Festival Flash Fiction Slam, flash fiction writers compete to win prizes, glory, and the respect of their peers, by reading their shortest stories of 5 minutes or under, out loud to an audience. Winners get a bundle of books, publication on the Northern Short Story Festival website, a detailed story critique by Strix editor SJ Bradley, and a coveted and hotly-contested place in the Flash […]

The Power of the Personal by workshop leader Barney Bardsley

  MEMOIR – or creative non-fiction – is enjoying a gathering popularity among contemporary readers. Why should that be? Because everyone loves a personal story, powerfully told. Despite the old-fashioned tinge of the word itself – ‘memoir’ – this form offers great imaginative possibilities to writers. Less constraining than straightforward autobiography, yet holding within it the power of a real-life experience, memoir can draw us into the world of another, in […]

Workshop leader Sarah Dunnakey on writing Yorkshire-set historical mystery The Companion

  “CHILD COMPANION WANTED age 6-7, for boy 7 Capt. Hall, M.F.H., St Breward, Bodmin” The brief notice in a 1938 edition of The Times newspaper was squeezed between adverts for a Cornish hotel and ‘Miss Oliver’s High Colonic Irrigation’. I don’t know to this day how I spotted it. I wasn’t even supposed to be reading the personal columns. I was doing research for my job as a TV […]

Academician Jean Davison’s Festival preview

  I’ve ringed the dates on my calendar with a fancy purple marker pen (not that I could forget!). The leaves are already bristling with the promise of exciting events at the forthcoming NoShoSto Festival. Here are just three which I’m particularly looking forward to. On Saturday 1st June, 2pm, the award winning short story writer C G Menon will be running a workshop called ‘Credible and Compelling Writing’. Through […]

Workshop leader Courttia Newland chooses his 3 favourite place-centred short stories

A sense of place anchors a short story. Expertly created, a sense of location places our feet in the world of the short story, and makes the reader feel that they have really ‘been there.’ We asked award-winning short story writer Courttia Newland, recent guest editor of The Good Journal, to tell us about his favourite three stories that use a sense of place.  Delhi, Vandana Singh (Read for free […]