Writing Short Stories - (Writers' and Artists' Companions) by Courttia Newland & Tania Hershman (Paperback)

About the Book

teach at the world famous Arvon Foundation writing course and have distilled the essence of their course into this practical handbook with contributions from leading writers.

Book Synopsis

Writing Short Stories: A Writers' and Artists' Companionis an essential guide to writing short fiction successfully.

PART 1 explores the nature and history of the form, personal reflections by the editors, and help getting started with ideas, planning and research.

PART 2 includes tips by leading short story writers, including: Alison Moore, Jane Rogers, Edith Pearlman, David Vann, Anthony Doerr, Vanessa Gebbie, Alexander MacLeod, Adam Thorpe and Elspeth Sandys.

PART 3 contains practical advice - from shaping plots and exploring your characters to beating writers' block, rewriting and publishing your stories.

Review Quotes

Hershman and Courttia Newland explore the craft (even that word is challenged) through their own experiences of writing and reading short stories. In place of rules, they offer advice.
Times Literary Supplement

The writing throughout is exceptionally accessible yet clearly shows the writers' expertise. The information is useful and comprehensive. Throughout are suggestions for reading great short stories to see what works. Last are lists of sixty favorite short stories and fifty collections, a great bibliography, and an index. This is a must-have book for fiction writers.
San Francisco Book Review

This is a comprehensive 'go to' book for anyone wishing to write and study the short story. A mine of information jointly written and edited by two contemporary writers who know this form well.
Monique Roffey

About the Author

Courttia Newland is the author of seven works of fiction. His latest, The Gospel According to Cane, was published in 2013 and has been optioned by Cowboy Films as TV Serial for the BBC. He was nominated for the Impac Dublin Literary Award and The Frank O' Conner award, as well as numerous others. His short stories have appeared in many anthologies and broadcast on Radio 4. He is Associate Lecturer in Creative Writing at Birkbeck, University of London, UK, and is completing a PhD in Creative Writing.

Tania Hershman is an award-winning writer of short and very short stories which have been widely published in print and online and broadcast on BBC Radio 3 and 4. Her first collection, The White Road and other Stories (2008) was commended, 2009 Orange Award for New Writers. Her second, My Mother Was An Upright Piano: Fictions (2012), contains 56 very short fictions and was longlisted for the 2012 Frank O'Connor International Short Story Award. Tania is founding editor of The Short Review, curator-in-chief of UK & Ireland short story hub ShortStops, and regularly teaches workshops on short fiction and using science as inspiration. Her website is www.taniahershman.com