Why I Love Short Stories

Why I Love Short Stories

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'I love short stories because you can read one in an hour and it will stay with you for life. I love them because they are deceptively simple to read when in actual fact they are extremely difficult to write. I love that in a short story a writer has to be exacting, has to use exactly the right words to say exactly the right thing. I love most of all that they are so focused when it comes to subject matter.

In a world obsessed with the bigger picture and what happens next, I love that almost subversively in the short story you are forced to view everything in close up. Often the narrative arch of a short story will turn on such a small axis something as huge as a novel would just swallow it up. Its like an act of mindfulness in prose form. Potent stuff!

I have been a fan of short stories all my life and count authors as varied as Paul Jennings, Margaret Atwood, Tim Winton, Flannery O'Connor and Ernest Hemingway as some of my favourites. But if I was to recommend just one collection it would be Open Stories by Lisa Moore (Virago). Moore is for me the queen of the extreme close up – there is such a crystalline, crackling vitality to her prose. Everything seems very raw and very experiential and very true. I go back to this collection time and time again, and every time find dipping into it like immersing myself in a pool of icy water.'

Carleen Peters, Marketing Executive, Virago


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