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Comma Short Story Course #4
In Transition: Short Stories by New Newcastle Writers
These pieces were all written on the Comma Press Short Story Course facilitated by Avril Joy at the Lit & Phil in Newcastle. The group met once a month for six months. Each session involved some critique from peers and the tutor of their own work, a close look at examples of stories from other writers as well as theory and practice of the craft.
The stories in this collection are evidence of that hard work but more importantly of the unique voices that emerged. Like all good short stories, they signal change. They reflect lives in transition. Journeys, both literal and metaphorical, are made from the confinement of the living room, where sheds and tunnels are built indoors, where a garage is transformed into a circus wagon. Women cross continents for love. One lives her life backwards. A family flee a disaster of biblical proportions, while another considers identity and the search for home through its photographs. A man prepares to die.
These are rich voices, at times distinctly northern, and there is no shortage of humour..
The stories in this collection are evidence of that hard work but more importantly of the unique voices that emerged. Like all good short stories, they signal change. They reflect lives in transition. Journeys, both literal and metaphorical, are made from the confinement of the living room, where sheds and tunnels are built indoors, where a garage is transformed into a circus wagon. Women cross continents for love. One lives her life backwards. A family flee a disaster of biblical proportions, while another considers identity and the search for home through its photographs. A man prepares to die.
These are rich voices, at times distinctly northern, and there is no shortage of humour..
55 pages, Kindle Edition
Published July 20, 2017
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About the author
Avril Joy
20 books22 followersI was born and brought up on the Somerset Levels, the setting for my first novel, The Sweet Track, published in 2007 by Flambard Press.
I left Somerset at eighteen for U.E.A, and a degree in the History of Art, then lived in London where I taught for a couple of years before moving north.
After the move north I travelled in India, Kashmir and Nepal for a while and when I came back I started work as a temporary teacher in a women’s prison HMP Low Newton, on the outskirts of Durham city. I met Writer-in-Residence Wendy Robertson here and that’s when I began writing. Until then I had no thoughts of ever being a writer.
In 2003 I won a Northern Promise Award, from New Writing North.
When the children were up and leaving home, I finally left my job in order to write. I was by this time a Prison Governor with responsibity for learning and skills development. I hadn’t meant to stay at Low Newton for so long but almost from the start I became deeply involved with the women and their lives – read more here and in many ways that never leaves me. I see it creep in again and again, often through the back door, into what I write.
In 2012 I won the inaugural Costa Short Story Award for my story Millie and Bird.
My latest novel, Sometimes a River Song, was awarded The People's Book Prize 2017 best Achievement Award
I left Somerset at eighteen for U.E.A, and a degree in the History of Art, then lived in London where I taught for a couple of years before moving north.
After the move north I travelled in India, Kashmir and Nepal for a while and when I came back I started work as a temporary teacher in a women’s prison HMP Low Newton, on the outskirts of Durham city. I met Writer-in-Residence Wendy Robertson here and that’s when I began writing. Until then I had no thoughts of ever being a writer.
In 2003 I won a Northern Promise Award, from New Writing North.
When the children were up and leaving home, I finally left my job in order to write. I was by this time a Prison Governor with responsibity for learning and skills development. I hadn’t meant to stay at Low Newton for so long but almost from the start I became deeply involved with the women and their lives – read more here and in many ways that never leaves me. I see it creep in again and again, often through the back door, into what I write.
In 2012 I won the inaugural Costa Short Story Award for my story Millie and Bird.
My latest novel, Sometimes a River Song, was awarded The People's Book Prize 2017 best Achievement Award
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