Our annual pick of the most exciting debut fiction has previously tipped Sally Rooney and Louise Kennedy, Tom Crewe and Douglas Stuart. Here the class of 2024 tell us their storiesEach year since 2014, the Observer New Review’s writers and editors have read scores of forthcoming debut novels from authors based in the UK and Ireland in order to spotlight the best; here’s our pick of 2024. As ever, our only guide was the quality of the books in front of us. This year’s list includes industry-tipped titles snapped up by big-spending publishers, but also a canny acquisition from a small independent press. There’s a third book from someone already widely celebrated as a writer of short stories, and even a debut from an actual Observer journalist. These are simply the books we rated most – and we think you’ll love them too.In previous years, we led you to Douglas Stuart’s Booker-winning Shuggie Bain, Gail Honeyman’s global bestseller Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine and Sheena Patel’s cult indie hit I’m a Fan. Last year’s picks continue to hoover up honours. Tom Crewe’s The New Life won the Orwell prize for fiction, while Michael Magee (Close to Home) won the Rooney prize, awarded to an outstanding Irish writer under 40. Both writers are on the shortlist for this month’s Nero debut fiction prize, along with Stephen Buoro, another of our 2023 picks.I’d take the washing up shifts no one else wanted so I could be at the back, jotting things downThere’s violence, but it’s about... Continue reading at 'The Guardian'
[ The Guardian | 2024-01-14 07:00:20 UTC ]
Colm Tóibín gives the third installment to the Words Ireland Lecture Series. This modern master discusses the craft of James Joyce—and the idea of craft itself. Is craft a concept more suited to poetry? Could strict ideas around craft actually be a hindrance to novelists and short story writers?... Continue reading at Literrary Hub
[ Literrary Hub | 2020-11-04 09:48:28 UTC ]
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Cultural Cross Sections From the town of Kaikoura on the South Island / Photo by the author New Zealand may be best known to many as Middle Earth (and that’s not a bad rep to have), but the country has much more than just the snowcapped Pass of... Continue reading at World Literature Today
[ World Literature Today | 2020-11-03 17:25:10 UTC ]
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Since its publication in 1990, Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried, a linked collection of semi-autobiographical short stories about the Vietnam War, has become a modern classic—in fact, its title story is the most frequently anthologized piece of short fiction in the last three decades, and... Continue reading at Literrary Hub
[ Literrary Hub | 2020-11-03 15:27:57 UTC ]
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We asked for your favorite short stories and got a long list! Here are 53 of the most outstanding short stories our readers have read. Continue reading at Book Riot
[ Book Riot | 2020-11-02 11:31:00 UTC ]
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AS AN EXPRESSIVE MEDIUM, video games have a strange way of reducing central concepts of modernist art and theory to basic operational elements. The technical specifications of “point of view” that have preoccupied novelists since the turn of the 20th century are crudely literalized within game... Continue reading at Los Angeles Review of Books
[ Los Angeles Review of Books | 2020-10-31 17:00:02 UTC ]
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Welcome to the virtual book launch of Tiny Nightmares: Very Short Tales of Horror, brought to you by The Antibody Reading Series in collaboration with WORD Bookstore (buy from the bookstore here). Tonight’s guests include editors Lincoln Michel and Nadxieli Nieto, along with contributors Meg... Continue reading at Literrary Hub
[ Literrary Hub | 2020-10-29 23:30:17 UTC ]
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Speak to us, oh lovers of short fiction: what are the most outstanding short stories you've read? Continue reading at Book Riot
[ Book Riot | 2020-10-27 10:31:00 UTC ]
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Writers Rachel Howzell Hall, Attica Locke and Ivy Pochoda talked with Times reporter James Queally for a 2020 Los Angeles Times Festival of Books event. Continue reading at Los Angeles Times
[ Los Angeles Times | 2020-10-24 16:06:42 UTC ]
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These short stories by Black authors include some of the best Black short stories published, for middle graders, YA readers, and adults. Continue reading at Book Riot
[ Book Riot | 2020-10-16 10:37:00 UTC ]
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The longing for connection, for belonging, is woven throughout a dozen short stories in Caroline Kim’s superlative debut collection. Continue reading at The Christian Science Monitor
[ The Christian Science Monitor | 2020-10-13 22:35:50 UTC ]
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The longing for connection, for belonging, is woven throughout a dozen short stories in Caroline Kim’s superlative debut collection. Continue reading at The Christian Science Monitor
[ The Christian Science Monitor | 2020-10-13 22:35:50 UTC ]
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The longing for connection, for belonging, is woven throughout a dozen short stories in Caroline Kim’s superlative debut collection. Continue reading at The Christian Science Monitor
[ The Christian Science Monitor | 2020-10-13 22:35:50 UTC ]
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“You think you’ve known someone for a long time,” a character in one of Jenny Bhatt’s short stories says of her Indian colleague shortly after he’s shot dead by a white man in a bar. “Maybe he never really took to us. Never really became one of us.” Turn by turn, each of his white […] The post... Continue reading at Electric Literature
[ Electric Literature | 2020-10-13 11:00:00 UTC ]
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What lengths will we go to in order to belong? To be part of something exclusive? To be part of a sisterhood or brotherhood? That’s the searing question that authors Benjamin Nugent and Genevieve Sly Crane try to answer in their books about college Greek life. Nugent’s Fraternity, a collection... Continue reading at Electric Literature
[ Electric Literature | 2020-10-02 11:00:00 UTC ]
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Authors of colour made up 19.6% of Young Adult writers published in 2019, a huge leap on previous years, according to new research. Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2020-09-28 14:25:59 UTC ]
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With no room for Hilary Mantel’s conclusion to her Wolf Hall trilogy, the six finalists also include four debutsHilary Mantel will not win a third Booker prize with the final novel in her Thomas Cromwell trilogy, after American writers made a near clean sweep of this year’s shortlist.With four... Continue reading at The Guardian
[ The Guardian | 2020-09-15 12:21:07 UTC ]
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From The New Yorker’s archive: short stories by Zadie Smith, Jennifer Egan, and Stephen King. Continue reading at New Yorker
[ New Yorker | 2020-08-30 10:00:00 UTC ]
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The Little Mermaid sacrifices her tail for a human soul. The Navajo Changing Woman grows old and is reborn with the seasons. The nymph Daphne becomes a tree to escape lovesick Apollo. Women transform because we are hungry. We transform because we’re restless, and because we’re dangerous. Women... Continue reading at Electric Literature
[ Electric Literature | 2020-08-28 11:00:00 UTC ]
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Ah, yes, the good old days: when novelists lent their faces and testimonials to advertisers hoping to sell tires, or a certain kind of beer, or fancy watches. It’s something you don’t see very much anymore, because we writers have become too principled to participate in advertising campaigns.... Continue reading at Literrary Hub
[ Literrary Hub | 2020-08-19 17:14:06 UTC ]
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Chris Bohjalian, Mary Kay Andrews and other novelists have turned to Zoom and Facebook Live to find their audience. Continue reading at The Washington Post
[ The Washington Post | 2020-08-19 12:00:00 UTC ]
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