Greetings, short story lovers!
Here’s what’s been on a packed ShortStops blog over the past few weeks…

Tania x

Live Lit
We welcome a new live lit event to our list, Verbose, Manchester: “bring words to the ‘burbs – prose and poetry, with special guests and an open mic”.

Verbose invite you to their first event, Jan 26th.  White Rabbit want your short stories for their Curioser and Curioser storytelling tea party on Feb 20th in London. Stand-Up Tragedy’s next event, Tragic Winter, is in London on Feb 28th and they are calling for submissions for the SUT blog.

Lit Mags

We’re delighted that 2 new lit mags have joined our list: Trafika Europe, which “brings you some of the best new literature from Europe… and later in 2015 the first “online” literary radio station”; and Shooter Literary Magazine, “supporting emerging writers of literary fiction, creative non-fiction, poetry and narrative journalism”. Welcome, both!

Shooter Literary Magazine is already blogging, with a call for submissions for Issue #2, on the theme of ‘Union.’ On the theme of themes, Brain of Forgetting’s first issue, Stones, is now available, and submissions for Issue 2 open shortly. Neon Magazine has opened submissions for Battery Pack II, its second anthology of tiny stories.  Other mags still want your stories too: The Manchester Review has is calling for your submissions. Jotters United is calling for submissions.

Anthologies
Freight Books wants short story submissons for an anthology inspired by Einstein’s Theory of General Relativity.

Competitions & Festivals
Ann Summers has launched an erotic fiction-writing competition, deadline Jan 23rd, so get your skates on! The Short FICTION short story prize is open for entries, deadline March 31st, as are the Felixtstowe Book Festival’s 2015 short story competition, deadline May 16th and The Moth’s International Short Story Prize, deadline June 30th. Words and Women announced the winners of their writing competition.

Workshops and Courses
Clevedon Community Bookshop is holding a flash fiction workshop taught by Gail Aldwin this Thurs, Jan 22nd. Paul McVeigh is running a one-day workshop on That Killer First Page- Submitting to Competitions and Journals, in London on Jan 31st. Alison Clayborn is running a Focus on Fiction course at the Brunel Museum in London.

And Ireland has a new national residential writing centre – The Story House in County Waterford, which is running a short story course from Mar 23-28th.

Last Minutes and Gentle Reminders
You have until Jan 23rd to submit stories on the theme of ‘Outsiders’ to Popshot, and January 25th is the deadline for prose pamphlet submissions for The Emma Press.

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.