Flash Fiction Competition

Can you write a short story exactly 150 words in length? Be inspired by authors such as David Gaffney! Email your entry to libraries@cheshirewestandchester.gov.ukby 31 October 2014 to be in with a chance of winning. 

Entries will be judged by Ashley Chantler and Peter Blair, editors of Flash: The International Short-Story Magazine and lecturers in the Department of English, University of Chester.

For more information please visit http://www.yourwestcheshire.co.uk/pages/2795/1/Flash_Fiction_Competition_2014.html

Flash, 7.1 (April 2014)

The twelfth issue of Flash: The International Short-Short Story Magazine is now available.

It features new stories from Australia, Belgium, Britain, Canada, Ethiopia, France, India, Ireland, Sri Lanka, and the USA. It opens with the winner of the UK’s inaugural National Flash Fiction Youth Competition (2014), ‘Unborn’ by Seeun Choi, a talented A-level student at Cardiff Sixth Form College. The competition was organized by Flash and the Department of English, University of Chester; it was judged by the editors and leading flash-author David Gaffney. For further information and to read the two runners-up, see Flash’s website.

The issue’s ‘Flash Presents’ section contains four pieces – ‘A Harbinger’, ‘Doctor Chevalier’s Lie’, ‘Old Aunt Peggy’, and ‘Ripe Figs’ – by Kate Chopin (1850–1904), a writer of subtle and often poignant fiction set mostly in 1870s and 1880s Louisiana, in the post-Civil War American South.

In the third-ever ‘Flash Essay’, ‘Samuel Beckett’s Faint Fiction’, Tim Lawrence reminds us that the great playwright and novelist was also author of haunting, lyrical fragments that might best be regarded as flashes. Alongside the essay, ‘The Cliff’ is reprinted, translated from Beckett’s original French.

‘Flash Reviews’ ranges from the humorous (Flash Fiction Funny) to the serious (Flashes of War), the masculine (Beasts and Men) to the feminine (The Kind of Girl), and concludes with a novella-in-flashes (Liliane’s Balcony). Each review is accompanied by a sample story.

To order a copy of the issue, or to subscribe to the magazine, visit the website:

http://www.chester.ac.uk/flash.magazine

 

 

New Open-Mic Night in Chester

Third-year University of Chester Fine Art and English Literature student, Jack Few, is hosting a new open-mic night at a local cafe in town, Harvest Moon Espresso Bar (Northgate Street). The spirit of the night is to provide a platform for a variety of creative performances, whether you’re an acoustic musician, dramatist, or writer of poetry and short stories.

The launch will be on 6 April, 5.00-7.00 p.m. All welcome. Bring your own bottle.

For further details, the Facebook group is at: https://www.facebook.com/groups/1479193662293847/

Visit By Ormiston Bolingbroke Academy

On 12 February, GCSE students from Ormiston Bolingbroke Academy attended a creative writing workshop at the University, hosted by the Department of English.

 

Led by lecturer Dr Graham Atkin, the students completed an exercise called ‘The Character Box’, which helps budding dramatists and fiction writers think about how to create distinct and interesting characters.

 

Each student filled in a blank box template on a sheet of A4, responding to different prompts and questions from Graham about the character they are creating, such as: ‘Name, Age, and Gender’; ‘Worst Day’; and ‘Dream/Hope/Aspiration’. Having filled in the template and cut out and assembled the boxes, everyone had a rounded (albeit cuboid) character about whom a play or story could be written.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

New E-Zine Founded By Creative Writing Student

 

Joe Pickard, a Creative Writing student in the English Department, has founded a new online magazine for poetry and short-short stories. The Alchemy of the Words is ‘dedicated to the promotion of unknown writers and unpublished writing’.

Submissions of poems and short-shorts of up to 300 words are welcome.

For further information, go to: http://thealchemyofthewords.hostei.com/HOME/

University of Chester Creative Writing Society

The Creative Writing Society meets at 7.00pm every Monday during term-time, in CVC101 (upstairs in the English Department). The meetings are a great opportunity for students from any department (but mainly English...) to share their creative work, get helpful feedback, take part in writing activities, exchange information about writing competitions and publishing opportunities, and chat with like-minded aspiring authors.

To find out more about the Society, visit its Facebook group page: https://www.facebook.com/groups/1405825462970579/

Best wishes,

The Creative Writing Society Committee

The English Department

New Poem By Lecturer Ian Seed

 

 

Dr Ian Seed’s prose poem ‘Sale’ has just been published in issue 3 of the online creative writing magazine The Harlequin.

To read the poem, click here: http://www.theharlequin.org/seed1/

At Chester, Ian teaches the BA Creative Writing modules ‘Understanding Poetry’, ‘Poetry: Other Voices, Other Forms’, ‘Writing Poetry for Publication’ and ‘Writing the Past’.

His poetry publications include Anonymous Intruder (2011), Shifting Registers (2011), Sleeping with the Ice Cream Vendor (2012) and Threadbare Fables (prose poetry and flash fiction; 2012).

Ian is the founder and editor of Shadowtrain: http://www.shadowtrain.com/