News from Booktrust

Celebrating our writer in residence Clare Wigfall and our love for the short story

Making Short Work: Why Short Stories Matter

18 October 2011, Free Word Centre, 6.30pm

Join Booktrust for a panel event with Clare Wigfall, her editor Lee Brackstone (Faber), digital short story editor Clare Hey (Shortfire Press) and Di Speirs (Head of Readings, BBC Radio 4) about the health of the short story in the digital age.

They will be discussing the short story in 2011, where it can go from here, what digital opportunities there are and what editors are looking for. There will be debate around short story sales, the importance of the form and best practice when it comes to writing.
This panel will be followed by readings from Clare Wigfall, Ali Smith (There But for The) and Adam Marek (Instruction Manual for Swallowing).
The event will take place on 18 October 2011 between 6.30pm and 8.30pm at Free Word Centre in Farringdon. (Free Word Centre, 60 Farringdon Road, London EC1R 3GA)
The event is FREE but there are limited spaces available. If you wish to attend, RSVP here
Biographies
Clare Wigfall's highly-acclaimed debut book of stories The Loudest Sound and Nothing was published in the UK by Faber in September 2007. The collection's opening story 'The Numbers' was awarded the 2008 BBC National Short Story Award and she was later nominated by William Trevor for the 2009 E.M. Forster Award. In November of this year, Walker Books will publish her first children's picture-book Has Anyone Seen My Chihuahua? Clare is currently Booktrust's online writer in residence
Lee Brackstone, 31, began his career in publishing as a reader at Jonathan Cape before moving to Faber as an assistant editor on the poetry, drama and film list. He gradually moved across to his real love, fiction, where he worked as assistant to Faber's then publisher, Jon Riley, and spent three months at the end of 1999 working in New York at the prestigious house Farrar, Straus and Giroux before returning to Faber.
Clare Hey is the founder of Shortfire Press, a digital-only short story publishing house specialising in stories from new and established authors. She is also an editor, currently at Simon and Schuster, and previously at HarperCollins.
Di Speirs worked in theatre and for the Australian Broadcasting Corporation before joining the BBC in 1991 as a Woman's Hour Producer. She edited the Woman's Hour serial for 3 years and produced the first ever Book of the Week. She is now Editor of the BBC London Readings Unit, responsible for around a third of the output in Book of the Week, a quarter of Book at Bedtime, as well as Afternoon Stories, Radio 3 readings and Woman's Hour dramas and Afternoon Plays adapted from novels and short stories. She has been instrumental in the BBC National Short Story Award since its inception six years ago and is a regular judge on the panel. She was also a judge of the 2008 Asham Award and chair of the Orange Award for New Writing 2010.
Adam Marek won the 2011 Arts Foundation Short Story Fellowship. He was shortlisted for the inaugural Sunday Times EFG Private Bank Short Story Award. His story collection, Instruction manual for swallowing, was nominated for the Frank O'Connor Prize. His stories have also appeared in Prospect magazine, The Sunday Times Magazine, The Stinging FlyRiptide, and in many anthologies including Lemistry, Litmus and The new uncanny from Comma Press, and The Best British Short Stories 2011.
Ali Smith's first novel, Like, was published to critical acclaim in 1997. A collection of short stories, Other Stories and Other Stories, was published in 1999. Her second novel, Hotel World (2001), won the Encore Award, a Scottish Arts Council Book Award and the inaugural Scottish Arts Council Book of the Year Award. It was also shortlisted for both the Orange Prize for Fiction and the Booker Prize for Fiction. Her most recent collection of short stories is The Whole Story and Other Stories (2003). In 2004, her novel, The Accidental (2004), was published, and won the 2005 Whitbread Novel Award. Girl Meets Boy was published in 2007 and There But For The in 2011.