The shortlist for the 10th year of the 4thWrite prize – the short story competition for unpublished writers of colour run by the publisher 4th Estate in association with the Guardian –... Read more »
From Homer’s Odyssey to Agatha Christie’s crime fiction, humans have produced plenty of tales to grace the bookshelf. But research suggests artificial intelligence may now be providing some competition. In a study... Read more »
Gromit, the canine star of the Wallace and Gromit animations, is “breaking his silence” and writing a memoir. After “bottling everything up for a long time”, the moment has come for him... Read more »
In early May, the Commonwealth Foundation announced the five regional winners for its influential Short Story Prize, which recognizes unpublished short fiction. One of the awardees, a Trinidadian writer named Jamir Nazir,... Read more »
There is a particular kind of British cruelty that thrives on politeness. The 2018 Windrush scandal exposed this in full: rather than chaos or spectacle, it revealed a machinery of clinical decisions... Read more »
The stories in Northern Irish writer Lucy Caldwell’s fourth collection are often devoted to family life, or a professional life in the arts: or both. They’re almost always about memory and how... Read more »
The title of Colm Tóibín’s new story collection seems to promise, at first glance, a return to familiar territory: a tour, perhaps, of old stomping grounds; a reconnection with earlier work. But... Read more »
Kiran Desai The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny When we emptied my father’s flat after his death, a crowd descended. They rushed away the cupboards and chairs, his shirts and socks. Ragpickers... Read more »
Andrew Michael Hurley The Summer People by Shirley Jackson I read this years ago and it’s a story that’s truly haunted me ever since. The titular “summer people” are the Allisons from... Read more »