41 The Scrubbins Todmorden Dear everyone, A joyful and merry festive season to you all. What a year it has been! For the Family Thompson – Colin, Helen, and sons Tom and David – this has been a year of highs and lows. Christmas 2019, when Colin had just lost his job, was a low point for us. Little did any of us know back then how much worse things […]
Yearly archives: 2020
12 posts
The Northern Short Story Festival Academy is delighted to announce that it will be supporting a further six short story writers from Yorkshire in 2021. These writers will join the 12 who were selected in 2018 when The Northern Short Story Festival Academy was launched. The Northern Short Story Festival Academy is a development programme aimed at helping short story writers in Yorkshire take their writing to the next level. […]
We’re delighted to be working in partnership with our friends at Comma Press to launch their new horror anthology, The New Abject on Wednesday 4 November at 7.30pm via Zoom. Book your tickets here. Something has fallen away. We have lost something of ourselves, our history, what we once were. That something, if we are to face it, look it squarely in the eyes, terrifies us, makes us wretched. This […]
The Northern Short Story Festival Academy is delighted to announce that applications to its Academy are now open! Over the last 2 years, the Academy has supported and developed 12 short story writers living in Yorkshire and is now on the search for its next intake. Are you a short story writer who wants to take your writing to the next level? Then the Academy could be for you! The […]
Dear Friends of the Northern Short Story Festival, After five years at the helm, I’ve recently made the decision to step down as director and programmer of the Northern Short Story Festival. In 2015, I saw the need for the North to have a festival celebrating this precise form. Our region was and is full of excellent shortform writers, and the excellent presses who publish them. My aim was always […]
In part one of ‘Making Short Stories Pay’, we asked Bluemoose Books Dan Micklethwaite, who writes short stories in a shed in West Yorkshire, and who has published over 50 pieces of published short fiction, including in international pro-paying markets, how an author might make a living from their craft. Part of the Northern Short Story’s online festival this year, part 2 of Making Short Stories Pay takes place on […]
This year, the Northern Short Story Festival celebrates its fifth birthday, and we want you to join us! For the first time ever, no matter where you are in the world, you will be able to come to the festival. That’s because this year, our Summer festival will take place online. So if you have a device and an internet connection, you’ll be able to access our programme of workshops, […]
We are proud to be part of #LeedsSaysThanks: arts organisations saying thank you to those key workers who have risked their lives and given their best during this current pandemic to keep us all safe. As a voluntary run organisation, we at the Northern Short Story Festival know how much a person gives by going above and beyond. That’s why we’re offering any keyworker – whether they’re an NHS […]
We are sorry to tell you that we have made the decision to postpone this summers’ Northern Short Story Festival. The Festival was due to take place on the 30th and 31st May, but due to the current Coronavirus outbreak, which we understand may continue on into the Summer, we have taken the decision to postpone. We will instead be offering a programme of virtual events the weekend of 30th […]
This Spring, The Northern Short Story Festival is proud to host two of Britain’s most unnerving short story writers, Jenn Ashworth and Andrew Michael Hurley, in Leeds’ most haunted surviving subscription library. Britain has a long history of folk tales, ghost stories and other uncanny fictions, and these literary ley lines are still shimmering beneath the surface of this green and pleasant land. Every few generations this strangeness crawls out […]