Gosh, has it really been 12 months? Yup, ShortStops is a year old! It’s been a fantastic year, we now have 172 lit mags and 26 live lit events on our lists – with more still to be added, not to mention 2800 followers on Twitter and, uncannily, 2800 short-story-related tweets sent! The blog has hosted 229 posts – about lit mags, live lit, short story competitions, story anthologies, calls for submission, writing workshops, short-story-inspired art installations, stories on the radio, reviews and more –  which is an average of a post every day and a half – and people say there’s nothing happening with short stories in the UK & Ireland? If you know these “people” – send them our way!

So let’s raise a glass to the thriving short story party that is going on round here, and look forward to the flourishing continuing to flourish! Below are a few examples of that from the blog from the past 2 weeks!

Cheers!
Tania

 

Radio

Ian McMillan, host of BBC Radio 3’s show, The Verb: Cabaret of the Word, dropped by to talk about his favourite short stories.

Lit Mags

We welcome Timezone magazine to our lit mags list, “a magazine created in London dedicated to short stories”.

Freight Books is calling for short story submissons for an anthology inspired by Einstein’s Theory of General Relativity. Short Story Sunday, which has just launched its first issue, is calling for submissions. Brain of Forgetting is calling for submissions on the theme of stones and Short Fiction journal also wants your short stories. Jotters United has a new issue out, Pins and Needles, the all-women issue and Bunbury magazine tells us about Issue Six, and Transportation tells us more about its London-Tasmania short story anthology, Islands and Cities.

Competitions
Kingston University announces the shortlist for the Hilary Mantel short story competition, the WriteIdea prize announces its finalists and Words And Women unveil the winners of the ‘About’ commission. Magic Oxygen are running a short story and poetry contest, deadline 30th November.

Live Lit

Fictions Of Every Kind is holding its next event, Help Yourself, on Dec 2nd in Leeds, including an open mic.

Conferences & Workshops

Judy Darley is running a Writing From Art workshop on Nov 12th in Bristol.

If you are eager for even more short-story-related news, do follow ShortStops on Twitter where, when we should be writing, we spend (far too) much time passing on news from lit mags, live lit events, short story workshops and festivals! If you’d like to review an event or a publication, drop me a line.

Happy reading, writing, listening and performing!