Small Wonder: THE short story festival. 24-27 September 2009
Thursday 24 September
Brief Encounters Start: 6pm • Tickets: £7 (£6 Students)
Two readings which confirm that short fiction can reverberate beyond the confines of a few pages. The stories in Jane Feaver’s collection, Love Me Tender, are set in a provincial town, where lives touch but do not connect - ‘collapsible relationships are as common as makeshift buildings in this collection’ (The Guardian). Owen Sheers, drawn to the condensed nature of poetry (The Blue Book; Skirrid Hill), has a gift for the evocation of passing moments. Jane Feaver’s debut novel is According to Ruth. Owen Sheers’ books include Resistance - a novel, and the non-fiction Dust Diaries.
Sidelong Perspectives Start: 8pm • Tickets: £7 (£6 Students)
Janice Galloway’s writing ‘veers between the good and the simply superb’ (Scotland on Sunday). She has published two story collections, Blood and Where You Find It (winner of the E.M. Forster Award) and is an acclaimed novelist. Her memoir, This Is Not About Me, received rave reviews. Tom Lee’s razor sharp debut collection, Greenfly, ranges from the US in the Gold Rush era to Berlin today. Together with Francis Bickmore, Senior Fiction Editor of Canongate, Publisher of the Year and William Skidelsky, Books Editor of the Observer, they consider the challenges of writing and publishing short stories.