Frank O'Connor Longlist 2009

Hot on the heels of last week's Edge Hill Short Story Prize shortlist comes the list of short story collections longlisted for the 2009 Frank O'Connor International Short Story Award - now renamed the The Cork City – Frank O’Connor Short Story Award. With a prize of €35,000 for the winning book, this is theworld's most lucrative award for a short story collection.

However, this is not all about how large the winner's cheque is. This year, the longlist has 57 short story collections - up from 38 last year - which means that publishers are definitely catching on to the prestige and exposure that comes with this award, where all eligible titles are longlisted. As I mentioned last week, this is a wonderful move on the part of the organisers, giving much-needed publicity to many, many books not published by mainstream publishers but by small presses without teams of publicists (including my own collection, The White Road and Other Stories). What is also wonderful is that "big" names are alongside newer writers, showcasing that the short story is not just the province of those who have yet to "graduate" to novels!

“We could have had another twenty entries but for many publishers missing the deadline," said declares Award administrator Patrick Cotter of the Munster Literature Centre in Cork. "We couldn’t bend the rules to allow late entries, there were simply too many titles already on the judges’ table this year. Next year we will have to consider a preliminary weeding-out before the publication of a longlist. But it is gratifying to see an explosion in short story publishing: encouraging short story publishing is the main raison d’etre of the award."

Here is the longlist, ordered by country, with links to those we have already reviewed:


15 American Authors:

Eleanor Bluestein, Tea and Other Ayama Na Tales, BkMk Press (University of

Missouri-Kansas City) review coming soon

Bonnie Jo Cambell, American Salvage,Wayne State University Press

Dennis Cooper, Ugly Man: Stories, Harper Perennial

David Eagleman, Sum, Pantheon Books (Random House)

Mary Gaitskill, Don’t Cry, Pantheon Books (Random House)

Lauren Groff, Delicate Edible Bird, Hyperion

Daniel A. Hoyt, Then We Saw The Flames, University of Massachusetts Press

Ian MacMillan, Our People, BkMk Press (University of Missouri-Kansas City)

James Mathews, Last Known Position, University of North Texas Press

Christopher Meeks, Months and Season, White Whisker Books

Lydia Peelle, Reasons for and Advantage of Breathing, Harper Perennial

Andrew Porter, The Theory of Light and Matter, University of Georgia Press

Glen Pourciau, Invite, University of Iowa Press

Midge Raymond, Forgetting English, Eastern Washington University Press review coming soon

Wells Tower, Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned, Farrar, Straus and Giroux


18 British Authors:

Anthony Cropper, Nature’s Magician, Route

Jane Feaver, Love Me Tender, Harvill Secker (The Random House Group)

Paul Flynn, Crossing the Border, CC Publishing

Tania Hershman, The White Road and Other Stories, Salt Publishing

Sue Hubbard, Rothko’s Red, Salt Publishing

Kazuo Ishiguro, Nocturnes, Faber and Faber Limited review coming soon

Sushma Joshi, The End of the World, FinePrint Books

Alex Keegan, Ballistics, Salt Publishing

Charles Lambert, The Scent of Cinnamon, Salt Publishing

James Lasdun, It’s Beginning to Hurt, Farrar, Straus and Giroux

Tom Lee, Greenfly, Harvill Secker (The Random House Group)

Frederick Lightfoot, Fetish and Other Stories, Superscript

André Mangeot, A Little Javanese, Salt Publishing

Sean O’Brien, The Silence Room, Comma Press

John Saul, As Rivers Flow, Salt Publishing

Ali Smith, The First Person and Other Stories, Penguin Group Canada

Mark Illis, Tender, Salt Publishing

Simon Van Booy, Love Begins in Winter, Harper Perennial review coming soon


5 Canadian Authors:


Tricia Dower, Silent Girl, Innana Publications and Education Inc.

Hannah Holborn, Fierce, McClelland & Stewart

Pamela Stewart, Elysium, Anvil Press

Deborah Willis, Vanishing and Other Stories, Penguin Group Canada

Kuzhali Manickavel, Insects Are Just Like You and Me Except Some of Them Have Wings, Blaft Publications


1 Dutch Author:

Arnon Grunberg, Amuse-Bouche, Comma Press

1 Estonian Author:

Kristiina Ehin, A Priceless Nest, Oleander Press

1 German Author:

Maike Wetzel (Trans. Lyn Marven), Long Days, Comma Press

1 Icelandic Author:

Gyrơir Elíasson (Trans. Victoria Cribb), Stone Tree, Comma Press

2 Indian Authors:

Jahnavi Barua, Next Door, Penguin Books ( India )

Jasmine Anita Yvette D’Costa, Curry is Thicker Than Water, BookLand Press


4 Irish Authors:

Michael J. Farrell, Life in the Universe, The Stinging Fly Press

Robert Graham, The Only Living Boy, Salt Publishing

Alan McMonagle, Liar, Liar, Words on the Street

Philip Ó Ceallaigh, The Pleasant Light of Day, Penguin Ireland


1 Macedonian Author:

Kiril Bozhinov, Eclipses: Stories of Disappearances and Reappearance, Beyond Art Productions

1 Malaysian Author:

Shih-Li-Kow, Ripples and Other Short Stories, Silverfish Books

2 New Zealand Authors:

Jeanette Galpin, Aroha and the River, Maungatiro Press of Marton

Charlotte Grimshaw Singularity, Vintage

2 Nigerian Authors:

Sefi Atta, Lawless, Farafina Books

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, The Thing Around Your Neck, Fourth Estate LTD

1 Spanish Author:

Empar Moliner (Trans. Peter Bush), I Love You When I’m Drunk, Comma Press

1 Ukrainian Author:

Sana Krasikov, One More Year, Portobello Books Ltd

1 Zimbabwean Author

Petina Gappah, An Elegy for Easterly, Faber and Faber

Congratulations to all these authors, and may this bring a much larger readership for short stories. The judges for the award are an American, an Irishman and a Pole: Lloren A. Foster, Milka Jankowska and Vincent McDonnell, who will be choosing a shortlist of 5 titles, to be announced in late June, and a winner in September.

For more on the award visit The Munster Literature Centre. Click here for last year's longlist.

May is Short Story Month at EWN

May has been declared Short Story Month over at the fabulous Emerging Writers Network blog always a lively place for a literary discussion and ideas for something great to read. Recent posts include Helen W. Mallon's review of Louise Erdrich's collection, The Red Convertible. Says Mallon:

I used the collection in my spring writing workshop, and the students pined when we moved to another author for a week or two. Erdrich is one writer whose language is accessible as popcorn--which makes her popular--yet wildly original in its beauty. Her plot twists are sometimes roll-on-the floor funny, but they never hammer you with the predictable. Her characters also slap you, when you least expect it, with the mystery and profundity of life.

EWN is posting a myriad of short-story related posts daily in May: check out what would be on short story "mix tapes" by Dawn Raffel and John Fox, John McNally on why anyone writes short stories, Gabriel Welsch on George Saunders' sublime Civilwarland in Bad Decline and Jonathan Baumbach on "fictions, short and long, that redefine possibilities".

This is just the tip of the short story iceberg, there is so much more that I am exhausted just thinking about it - visit the Emerging Writers Network and raise a glass for Short Story Month.!

Edge Hill Prize shortlist

The five short story collections on the shortlist for the £5000 Edge Hill Prize for the Short Story have just been unveiled:

• Chris Beckett, The Turing Test, Elastic Press
• Gerard Donovan, Country of the Grand, Faber (reviewed as Young Irelanders, the US title)
  
• Anne Enright, Yesterday’s Weather, Random House
• Shena Mackay, The Atmospheric Railway, Random House
• Ali Smith, The First Person and Other Stories, Hamish Hamilton (review coming soon!)

Congratulations to all the shortlisted, an interesting list pitting four rather big names in literary fiction, all of whom are either MAN Booker Prize winners or nominees, and published by large publishers, against Chris Beckett - a small-press-published author of a collection whose stories, says the Edge Hill website, "feature, among other things, robots, alien planets, genetic manipulation and virtual reality, but their centre focuses on individuals rather than technology, and they deal with love and loneliness, authenticity and illusion, and what it really means to be human". Elastic Press must be hopping up and down with glee!

Last year's shortlist did seem to me rather more eclectic:

• Tiny Deaths by Robert Shearman (Comma Press)
• The Separate Heart by Simon Robson (Jonathan Cape)
• Walk the Blue Fields by Claire Keegan (Faber and Faber)
• The People on Privilege Hill by Jane Gardam (Chatto and Windus)
• Old Devil Moon by Christopher Fowler (Serpent’s Tail)

Tiny Deaths is the first collection by Doctor Who writer Shearman, The Separate Heart is Simon Robson's debut collection, Walk the Blue Fields is Clare Keegan's second collection, Jane Gardam is the author of too many novels and short story collections to mention, and Old Devil Moon is Christopher Fowler's 10th collection of dark short fiction.

It is wonderful that there is a prize for short story collections, don't get me wrong, but we have reviewed so many excellent small-press published collections and debut collections by exciting and talented new writers over the past year, it is a shame that they didn't get a stronger showing on the shortlist this year.

I understand that picking 5 is an impossible task, perhaps the Edge Hill prize organisers could take a leaf out of the Frank O'Connor International Award for the Short Story's book: they publish a longlist that includes every book entered that fits the eligibility criteria. This year's longlist will be announced next week, and if last year is anything to go by it will include 50 or so short story collections (among them, in the interests of full disclosure, my own collection, The White Road and Other Stories). This will be whittled down to 5 books for the shortlist - but the longlist was published last year in the Guardian and all the books received a much-needed boost.

All of us aim to spread the word about great short stories, and the Frank O'Connor Award longlist accomplishes this simply and effectively - we can't all be winners, but just the fact of getting published is an achievement worth celebrating! Good luck to all!

Short Stories Getting Attention in New York and London

Two newspaper articles on short stories in major broadsheets (NY Times, Guardian) on the same day (April 4th)??? Have we slipped through a wormhole into another dimension? Welcome, I say... bring it on!

First, James Lasdun, the winner of the inaugural BBC National Short Story Prize in 2006, "celebrates growing confidence in an often overlooked form", in the Guardian:

'Art requires honour", declared Cicero. Of the literary arts the short story has always been the least honoured, trailing into the House of Fame a humble fourth after novels, plays and poetry. Between Chekhov and Cheever there can't have been more than a dozen major reputations founded solely or even largely on this unassuming form. You might have thought that in our own attention-deficient age, a narrative art based on speed and brevity would have become the main attraction, but outside the creative writing workshop, where its small scale makes it convenient for study (a dismal basis for survival), that hasn't been the case. Lack of encouragement may be the cause, or it may be something inherently skittish about whichever muse presides over this delicate art: a reluctance to settle anywhere long enough to generate a heavy-duty literary industry. It may be the relative newness of the form (if you accept Turgenev's claim that "we all come out from under Gogol's Overcoat", you can date its birth precisely to 1842), or it may be that people regard it as somehow highbrow or artsy; an insider sport for practitioners and aficionados only. Whatever the case, people still seem to want their blockbusters.

Lasdun's article takes a more positive turn and does something which is very dear to The Short Review's heart: he reviews five debut short story collections: Sana Krasikov's One More Year, Daniyal Mueenuddin's In Other Rooms, Other Wonders, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's The Thing Around Your Neck, Petina Gappah's An Elegy for Easterly, and Wells Tower's Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned. And just because he is celebrating the short story form, don't think that this is a puff piece; Lasdun is pretty tough, and he pits one collection against another, which is an interesting way of reviewing. Not all the stories do what he would like a short story to do:

I think there's at least a unique potentiality in the short story, and that it has to do with, among other things, omission and a quality of internal resonance between the parts that, if handled well, can escalate the emotional power of the whole.Colette's story The Hand consists of little more than a young bride looking at her husband's hand as he sleeps, omitting almost all biographical information. But the isolated image and the woman's long, transformative gaze, under which the hand turns from human to ape-like to crab-like to "a panoply of war", conveys all the precarious freight of feeling attendant on a new marriage. Jhumpa Lahiri's Sexy runs its investigation of sexual desire through two parallel relationships that glance off each other in ways that send out progressively brighter sparks of illumination, facilitating a final, stunningly dramatic release of self-knowledge in its central character. Krasikov, Mueenuddin and Adichie are all self-evidently gifted writers who seem likely to engage large audiences whatever shape their work takes. But for what it's worth (and for most readers the distinction probably isn't very important), their approach to the short story seems to me largely novelistic, in that they tend to favour a complete, upfront delivery of the goods over this kind of fugitive alchemy.

Read the full article here.

A.O Scott focused on the American Short Story in the New York Times, but the refrain is similar to Lasdun:

To call an American writer a master of the short story can be taken at best as faint praise, or at worst as an insult, akin to singling out an ambitious novelist’s journalism — or, God forbid, criticism — as her most notable accomplishment. The short story often looks like a minor or even vestigial literary form, redolent of M.F.A.-mill make-work and artistic caution. A good story may survive as classroom fodder or be appreciated as an interesting exercise, an étude rather than a sonata or a symphony. A young writer who turns up at the office of an editor or literary agent with a volume of stories is all but guaranteed a chilly, pitying welcome.

However, it is time for a rethink:

The near-simultaneous appearance of three new literary biographies offers a powerful and concentrated challenge to the habit of undervaluing the short story. The subjects of these lives — Flannery O’Connor,John Cheever, Donald Barthelme — all produced longer work as well, but their reputations rest on shorter work. And this work, far from being minor, is among the most powerfully original American fiction produced in the second half of the 20th century.

Much of it, indeed, makes the novel look superfluous.

Scott also mentions Wells Tower, flavour of the moment - which is no bad thing for the short fiction community! - calling his collection "the most vivid recent example of the way a good story, or a solid collection of them, can do more than a novel to illuminate the textures of ordinary life and the possibilities of language. And the short story may provide a timely antidote to the cultural bloat of the past decade, when it often seemed that every novel needed to be 500 pages long and every movie had to last three hours — or four years, if it took the form of a cable series." And The Short Review heartily applauds Scott's suggestion at the end:

The Kindle might, in time, spur a revival of the short story. If you can buy a single song for a dollar, why wouldn’t you spend that much on a handy, compact package of character, incident and linguistic invention?

Exactly! Read the full article here.

Short story collection news: Sana Krasikov wins $100,000 Sami Rohr prize

Congratulations to Short Review author Sana Krasikov winner of the $100,000 Sami Rohr prize for Jewish Literature for her short story collection, One More Year. Read our review of One More Year and an interview with Sana about her collection.


About the prize:

Each year, the prize of $100,000 will aim to reward an emerging writer whose work has demonstrated a fresh vision and evidence of future potential. Recipients must have written a book of exceptional literary merit that stimulates an interest in themes of Jewish concern. Fiction and non-fiction books will be considered in alternate years.

What would you do with $100,000??

Larry Dark, Director of The Story Prize, Talks About Short Stories

Author and Short Reviewer Sarah Salway talks (by email) to Larry Dark, founder and director of the $20,000 Story Prize, the largest prize for short story collections in America, which was recently awarded to Tobias Wolff for Our Story Begins.

Sarah Salway: First of all, Larry, could you tell us about the Story Prize? How did it start?

Larry Dark: It's a bit of a long story, but since you asked, here goes. When I was the series editor for Prize Stories: The O. Henry Awards (an annual anthology of the year's best stories from U.S. and Canadian magazines) I was invited to speak at Manhattanville College, just north of New York City. I don't remember exactly what I said that night, but I later learned I made an impression on Julie Lindsey, the founder of the The Story Prize. I'm a true believer in the value of the short story, and that brand of idealism has helped me and sometimes hurt me. In many respects, it led to my ouster from the O. Henry Awards in 2002, but it also led me to this. My wife, Alice, went to speak at Manhattanville in 2003, where she encountered Julie, who said she was thinking of starting a book award for short story collections. She asked if I was available and if I would be interested. Alice brought home Julie's card, and I e-mailed her immediately, as in moments later.

A series of meetings ensued as we developed the idea, along with Julie's husband Jay and, of course, with excellent advice on my end from Alice. I then went on a a listening tour in the fall of 2003, meeting with publishers, editors, booksellers, agents, and writers. I asked them what they thought worked and didn't work for book awards. Their input was very valuable to us. One thing we had decided was that we would offer a $20,000 prize to the winner, which was and still is more than any other annual U.S. book award for fiction--more than the National Book Awards or the Pulitzer Prize. Awards in the U.K. and elsewhere are far more generous. Why is something of a mystery. We launched The Story Prize in 2004.

SJS: What do you look for in a winning collection?

LD:What we look for in a short story collection is excellence. That sounds like a glib answer, and I'll admit it is. But literary awards are highly subjective. We had decided to read as wide a selection of short story collections as we could get publishers to submit and to never associate The Story Prize with one particular style or approach. That said, if we have a bias, it's toward the traditional, well-made, realistic story. But we remain open to anything, and some of our finalists have departed from that model. The best examples of that are Maureen F. McHugh's Mothers & Other Monsters, from 2005, and last year's Demons in the Spring by Joe Meno--both published by small presses.

SJS: You say you're a 'true believer in the value of the short story', and indeed prizes like the Story Prize help to publicise the form. What radical move (apart from your prize!) would you like to see to get people reading the short story?

LD: Cultural arbiters need to embrace the form. We have to stop treating short story collections like they're medicine and underscore the pleasures of reading them. I'd like to see people like Oprah Winfrey and Richard and Judy (do I have that right?) choose short story collections for their book clubs. We have a National Endowment for the Arts Program in the U.S. called the Big Read, but so far they've only chosen novels. They should mix in some story collections. Novels dominate our book awards, which is one reason we created The Story Prize. Still, I'd like to see more short story collections make the short lists and win those awards. And do you know what it would do for short fiction if Barack Obama was seen carrying around a story collection instead of a wonky policy tome?

SJS: This years winner, Tobias Wolff, was commended by the judges for his 'great sense of the human condition'. Could you expand a bit about what this means? I was interested because most - non-short story reading - people think of a short story as just a slice of life. Do you think we can be too unambitious about what we expect from reading and writing short stories.

LD: Yes, writers can be too unambitious. I think the best stories reveal in some way what it' s like to be a human being living in the time and place the story was written or set. When you read Tobias Wolff, you often experience recognition of some aspect of being a person that you might never have thought about or identified before. The best writers are keen observers of the world around them and go deep within themselves to provide something essential. A story that is well-made or clever but that doesn't give something extra, that sense of recognition, isn't as good as it should be.

SJS: Have you noticed any changes in the way the short story is considered since the Story Prize was established in 2004?

LD: I'm not sure. One of our aims was, and still is, to bring greater attention and support to short story collections. I'm certainly paying more attention, as are our judges and finalists, but are others? I have found a great degree of support for short fiction here in the U.S. that I didn't know about before, and a book award seems like an inevitable part of that. Now, there's also the Frank O'Connor International Short Story Award, based in Ireland, which does its part, too. But are more people reading short stories? Are more people buying short story collections? Are publishers more willing to support stories? The answer to all, is probably not.

The Story Prize has only been around for five years. Did we really expect one book award could change all of that? No. What we have done is add to the network of support for short fiction. We've given $20,000 to five writers, which, I hope, will encourage them to keep writing stories. So any changes we've seen have been on a relatively small scale, imperceptible to the culture at large. In our view, however, in terms of artistry, the story is going as strong as it ever has. We read incredibly good books every year--more than we can honor as finalists. If we can bring a little focus to them and to short fiction, then we've done what we can for now.

SJS: It used to be that many beginner short story writers ached to write like Raymond Carver. Who do you think are the big influences these days?

LD: I've been hearing that one of the biggest influences in the U.S. for the last twenty years or so has been the book Jesus' Son by Denis Johnson. I also see the influence of George Saunders' broadly comic tales. However, someone who taught writing would probably know better than I do. I'm reading a polished, finished product--books that don't necessarily trumpet their influences.

SJS: Do you notice a difference between short stories coming from Britain (and indeed Europe) and those from America? If so, what?

LD: I don't think I see enough short story collections coming out of the U.K. and Europe to make a fair comparison. For one thing, we don't read translated books for The Story Prize. For another, U.S. publishing remains fairly parochial. Many collections published in the U.K. never get picked up by U.S. publishers.

Last year, I asked Tessa Hadley why she thought American writers seem to favor short stories more than British writers do (if indeed it's true), and she answered that there are many more places to publish stories in the U.S. We have hundreds of literary magazines. We also have more graduate writing programs. However, I don't necessarily see those as the wellspring of short fiction that critics of writing programs do when they're laying into their straw men. The fact is that publishers dissuade a great many natural short story writers from continuing to write short fiction and push them instead to write novels, which generally sell better.

That's why it was so great that Jhumpa Lahiri's Unaccustomed Earth debuted at No. 1 on the New York Times Best-Seller List. It showed that it was possible.

SJS: It's probably very difficult with the number of collections you read every year, but aside from the winners, could you pick out some names from the collections that didn't win but stood out for you?

LD: I'll give you a dozen that have stood out for me: A Better Angel by Chris Adrian, Say You're One of Them by Uwem Akpan, The Development by John Barth, Miss Hempel Chronicles by Sarah Shun-lien Bynum, Varieties of Disturbance by Lydia Davis, Damned If I Do by Percival Everett, Brief Encounters with Che Guevera by Ben Fountain, All Aunt Hagar's Children by Edward Jones, Magic for Beginners by Kelly Link, Michael Martone by Michael Martone, Refresh, Refresh by Benjamin Percy, and Mothers & Sonsby Colm Toibin. This is a highly subjective list and would probably be different on different days.

SJS: And lastly, your favourite ever short story?

LD: I am continually frustrating my wife and son by my unwillingness to declare favorites. I have no favorite color, food, movie, book, author, song, record, etc. Seriously, I find the whole concept of favorites puzzling. That said, how can I not choose In the Gloaming by Alice Elliott Dark? It never ceases to amaze or move me, and I was present when it came into being. Nonetheless, I feel confident that it's a story I would greatly admire even if I'd never met the author.

(Note from SJS: I should disclose here that Larry is married to Alice Elliott Dark, author of the brilliant ‘In the Gloaming’ (which appeared in Best American Short Stories of the Century, ed John Updike, and a short story collection of the same name.)

Sarah Salway reviews Michael Martone by Michael Martone in this month's issue.

For more about the Story Prize, visit their website.

Exciting Times: World Book Day & Small Press Month, and some congratulations

Today, March 5th, is World Book Day, and March is Small Press Month. So - what are you reading right now? The screen of your mobile phone? Your friends' Facebook updates? Nothing at all? Come on, get to it, there is so much to read that if you start now, you might just scratch the surface of great writing.

If we're talking about short story collections, the small press and independent publishers are the wonderful, brave and inspiring souls keeping the industry afloat. They publish what (foolish) others won't, simply because of length, and they also take risks with writing that is adventurous, experimental, different. Don't just applaud - read a small press book today! To see what we've reviewed on The Short Review, visit that section of the Categories page.


Congratulations to Tobias Wolff who has won the $20,000 Story prize for his collection, Our Story Begins. His short story, Bullet in the Brain, is the sort of astonishing writing that has stayed with me for all the years since I first read it. Congratulations also to runners up Jhumpa Lahiri’s best-selling Unaccustomed Earth (which we reviewed here) and Joe Meno’s Demons in the Spring.

What are you waiting for? Stop reading this blog, and go fondle a book.