On Recent British and Irish Short Stories Great for Teaching
Help Me Put Together a Reading List
In my more extreme moments of curriculum design, now I’m running a Creative Writing MA, I consider only having short stories by contemporary British writers.
That’s what I wrote a few days ago.
In relation to Alan Bennett, but also (in my head) to the American Sense of Space.
It’s very easy to present students with a US-dominated view of writing, which means they end up with a US-slanted view.
I was soon afterwards asked who some of these writers on my curriculum would be?
I’ve made a start, but it’s already become clear I need to make this collaborative.
And so, I need your suggestions.
Along with British (English, Scottish, Welsh and Northern Irish) stories, I think it would be ridiculous and self-harming not to include stories from Ireland.
Here is my draft list, with links where possible —
Ruby Cowan, ‘Biophile’, This Paradise, Boilerhouse Press, 2020
Thomas Morris, ‘All the Boys’, we don’t know what we’re doing, Faber & Faber, 2015
Claire-Louise Bennett, ‘The Lady of the House’, POND, Fitzcarraldo, 2015
Ali Smith, ‘May’, The Whole Story, Hamish Hamilton, 2003
Courttia Newland, ‘Sound Boys’ from Being Dad: Sound Boys ed. Dan Coxon, Tangent Books, 2016
Kevin Barry, ‘Beer Trip to Llandudno’, Dark Lies the Island, Vintage, 2013
Zadie Smith, ‘The Embassy of Cambodia’, The New Yorker, 2013
Helen Simpson, ‘Heavy Weather’, Dear George, Vintage, 2001
Hilary Mantel, ‘The Assassination of Margaret Thatcher - August 6th 1983’, The Guardian, 2014
China Mieville, ‘Familiar’, Looking for Jake, Macmillan, 2005
But this is only a start.
There could be more horror, folk horror, sci-fi, spec fic, crime...
I’ve taught many of these stories already, so know they are good for the workshop.
What have I missed?
Which stories would you suggest were included?
A source of some more Scottish stories is The Poet and the Echo, Scratch Books, 2023. I especially like 'The Grey Eagle', by Harry Josephine Giles, written in the voice of a Scottish man in 1905 - though is he a man? The narrative voice is appropriate for someone in 1905 and that's part of its appeal/difference I think. Long old-fashioned sentences.
Cynan Jones would be interesting - most/all of his novels are so short that they are effectively short stories.