Now, anyone who has spent any time at all reading posts on this blog will know I think (cue Matt Smith Doctor voice) short stories are cool. So much so I would go so far as to say some of my best friends are short stories. Indeed I take the stance that any friend of the short story is a friend of mine. Add to that the fact that I am both European and a reader/writer of short stories and it should come as no surprise that I have friended/followed The European Short Story Network.The website launched on the 18th October 2011, with an event in Manchester, UK with authors Bjarte Breiteig (Norway) and Thijs de Boer (Netherlands), as part of the Manchester Literature Festival.
From the website:
The European Short Story Network (www.theshortstory.eu) is a non-profit, pan-European initiative by authors, publishers and literature festivals. Its aim is simple – to celebrate the work of contemporary short story writers from across Europe, and to help readers find and enjoy their work.
We’ll be adding lots of new short stories and interviews with authors on a monthly basis. If you want to know more, and get updates about new stories, please sign up to our newsletter.
We’re also inviting several authors to perform at some wonderful short story festivals this year. You can catch our events at: Kikinda Short (Serbia), Wroclaw Short Story Festival (Poland) and theManchester Literature Festival (England).
We’ll be adding new short stories and interviews with authors each month. If you want to know more, and get updates about new content, please sign up to our newsletter. And of course, you can also keep up with what’s happening by following us on Twitter and liking our Facebook page.
In addition to the interviews on the front page of the site, it’s worth clicking through to the author pages as each one features a story by the author, particularly cool as a good number of the stories are in English translation. Here’s hoping this leads to a few more English translations of short fiction collections from across Europe. In the meantime, I’m looking forward to see how the initiative develops over the coming months.
Dan Powell 
5 Responses to The European Short Story Network
Dan – thanks for finding this. I’m off now to sign up – hopefully I’ll be able to fit a few short stories in between the MMU tomes!
ps, have tweeted this, J
Planning to read a few short stories myself as soon as I finish the Anne Tyler – need a break from the novels.
Hi Dan,
This is a project I launched with the help of some writers, festivals and publishers from across Europe. Seems to me there’s an awful lot of great short story writing (and festivals dedicated to the short story) that we don’t get to hear about in the UK, and one of the aims of the project is to redress this balance a little. We’ll be adding more stories, interviews and links to other short story-related stuff as we go, and of course we welcome suggestions of great contemporary short story writers who ought to be translated into English.
With thanks,
Jim Hinks (Comma Press).
Hi Jim, thanks for stopping by. I didn’t realise it was yourself and Comma Press behind this, that makes it twice as awesome. As I said in the post, this kind of initiative can only be a good thing. The fact that you’ve already introduced me to a number of authors whose work is unfamiliar to me is very welcome indeed.
Comments are closed.