The Short Story Podcast

Tom Conaghan’s inspirational anthology, Reverse Engineering, a great resource for writers and teachers!

Ruby Cowling's extraordinary realisms

The visionary worlds of Michel Faber.

Two stories of resistance and subversion.

A complex and multi-layered short story, about a place haunted by the past.

A discussion of two great short stories from 'Pond' by Claire-Louise Bennett

A short story about a whole nation.

Possibly the best short story ever written...

Today we discuss the epistolary short story ‘Dear Conchi’, with our first guest, Lucia Berlin expert, Nina Ellis.

The 2022 Caine Prize winning short story from Idza Luhumyo.

A consummately skilful and nuanced short story about loss.

A dramatically intense and innovative short story about the devastating effects of Fascism. 

A sensitive and complex story about the pressures on a young couple who move to a foreign country, with a different culture and religious faith.

'Death of the Pugilist, or the Famous Battle of Jacob Burke & Blindman McGraw' is the extraordinary story of a bareknuckle fight in 19th century England.

'Bad Dreams’ is a supremely skilful and multi-layered short story about how a young girl's nightmare intrudes into reality. Hadley, Tessa, ‘Bad Dreams’ collected in Bad Dreams, (London: Jonathan Cape, 2017).

Powerful and brilliant imagery juxtaposes a couple walking in the snow in northern England with the vigil of a mother at her son’s hospital bed in war-torn Iraq. Mort, Graham, ‘A Walk in the Snow’ collected in Touch (Bridgend: Seren, 2010).

‘The Children Stay’ is a short story about a young wife who takes the role of Eurydice in an amateur theatrical production, with life-changing consequences. Munro, Alice, ‘The Children Stay’ collected in The Love of a Good Woman (London: Chatto & Windus, 1998).