The ten greatest short story writers of the twenty- first century? What, we scoff, only ten? After all, the century’s fourteen already – that’s enough time to compile a list twice as long as this one! However, we’re going to restrict ourselves to ten because we’re also interested in your input: which story writers have blown your mind since the big Y2. K? Leave your comments below! Life of a King is the unlikely true story of Eugene Brown and his one-man mission to give inner-city kids of Washington D.C. Donner Party Descendants The survivors of the Donner Party settled throughout California, and some became quite famous. As it happens, I used to live in Elk Grove. With Patrick Fugit, Shannyn Sossamon, Shea Whigham, Leslie Bibb. A film set in a strange afterlife way station that has been reserved for people who have committed. And in the meantime, please, please, please check out these authors if you’re not already familiar with their works – they’re so good it hurts! Kevin Barry. Barry is our Number One: this Irish writer has two collections, There are Little Kingdoms (2. Dark Lies the Island (2. Barry’s prose, his local idiolect, his use of imagery and his peerless dialogue – he’s a superstar. If you want a sampler, try to find his story . One of our favourite stories, . Pastoralia (2. 00. In Persuasion Nation (2. Tenth of December (2. In fact, contrary to the prevalent notion that the short story is on its last legs, Tenth of December was shortlisted for the 2.
Folio Prize and selected as one of the ten best books of 2. New York Times Book Review, and it managed to get to the number two spot on the New York Times hardback bestseller list. How’s that for alive and kicking? You’ll never look at a TV show, or star, in quite the same way again. Wells Tower. What a name, right? Tower’s only book to date is called Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned (2. The book’s funny and harsh and diverse; it’s great o contemporary America and it’s also a pretty good example of how a writer can take a series of influences (Hemingway, for one, is in evidence here) and twist them into something unique. More accurately a short story cycle rather than a collection, this et of interlinked narratives follows a group of people loosely connected to the music industry in the USA from the mid twentieth- century until the near future; it’s all about time and memory and how we can understand how our lives have shaped us. It’s witty and imaginative and brutal and very clever. The second story, ; The Gold Cure’, is one of our faves, but check out . Oh, yes. Kelly Link. Link’s got stories in anthologies all over the place, but check out Stranger Things Happen (2o. Magic for Beginners (2. Pretty Monsters (2. She’s generally classified as fantasy or slipstream writer, but her work is truly cross- genre – in fact, she’s one of those writers that makes the whole idea of the genre seem nothing more than a ridiculously juvenile marketing scheme. Her stories are crazy and magical and devastating and witty – they’re contemporary and timeless and mix urban realism with a demented fairytale horror aesthetic. Your life ain’t worth living if you haven’t read Kelly Link. The title story of Magic for Beginners is superb, but so’s the sort- of- zombie story, . A Chinese author living in the US, she writes brilliantly about modern China in a really understated, elegant way: we recommend . You could probably argue that he writes more about men than women, and his stories are rarely set in his native Ireland. He’s an editor of short stories as well as a writer, and as an advocate of the form, he once told a journalist for the Irish magazine Hot Press that . Keegan’s won just about every prize that Irish literature has to offer, and some of them twice; she writes about rural Irish life with a degree of delicacy and empathy that make that age- old ground seem newly fertile. He does sci- fi, ghost stories, realistic parent- and- child tales and more – quirky, yes, fantastical, yes, but throwaway, never. Marek’s stories linger. If you’ve got any recommendations, which make even the most hardened short story hater fall head over heels in love, please let us know down below. Joel Willans is the Editor of Ink Tank and Co- Founder of Ink Tank Media. Author of the short story collection, SPELLBOUND: Stories of Women’s Magic over Men, his prize- winning fiction has been broadcast on BBC radio and published in dozens of magazines and anthologies worldwide. You can find him on Twitter and Instagram.
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