Review of Used to Be in Confingo

There'a a lovely review of Used to Be in the new issue of the Manchester-based magazine Confingo. Confingo is an extremely smartly-produced publication, with stunning artwork and photography and high-standard fiction and poetry. This issue also carried an interview with David Gaffney. I thoroughly recommend it as a magazine worth subscribing to.

Of Used to Be, reviewer Emma Bosworth says: 'The writing is is vivid, buoyant, incisive ... vibrant evocation of time and place - and the power of the human mind to transcend both.'

Stand Magazine

Lovely surprise this weekend: a copy of the latest issue of Stand Magazine plopped through my letterbox, containing a new story of mine, 'The Relentless Pull of Gravity' - a story, based around the idea of black holes, about the difficulty or ease of escaping the weight of the problems of past generations. I'm thrilled to be in great company in the issue, as you can see from the cover above.
Buy the issue here, or subscribe, which I urge you to do: Stand is one of the longest-running lit mags and has been responsible for supporting countless well-known writers in the early days of their careers - Angela Carter to name but one - and on: writers go on feeling that it's a privilege to be published there.

New Issue of Mslexia out

Many magazines will tell you that they don't look more favourably on your submissions if you subscribe. I do know that when Ailsa Cox, John Ashbrook and I published the short story mag Metropolitan we used to join in the magazine-publishers' collective sigh that if only everyone who submitted subscribed we'd be well away, but we made a point of never converting that into a prejudice against submissions from non-subscribers. You do wonder, though, if people are sometimes tempted, but then maybe I'm just an old cynic. Anyway, before it was more generally known that Elizabeth Baines is a writing name, at least I could be sure that that wasn't happening when my stories were accepted by mags, since it's a different name which appears on my cheques and thus usually on mag subscriber lists.

One magazine which reassures us that they are never thus swayed (which reassurance only serves to suggest that they do indeed suspect that some mags are!) is Mslexia, the magazine for women who write. One excellent service they do provide for their subscribers, however, is that they list their latest publications. I've subscribed to Mslexia since its beginning, but since I did so under my non-writing name, and it seemed too fussy to explain, I wasn't able to take advantage of that when Balancing on the the Edge of the World came out. This time, though, I decided to write and explain, and the latest issue has just popped through the door, with Too Many Magpies listed - and they've even included a picture of the cover! Thank you, MsLexia! This issue carries an interview with novelist Kamila Shamsie and the winning stories of the latest Mslexia short story competition.

The problems of having more than one name, though...!

21: A New Online Critical Journal

The launch yesterday of 21, a new online critical journal from Edge Hill University, edited by Ailsa Cox and Rob Spence and concerned with contemporary and innovative fiction. Among the articles I haven't yet read is one on post 9/11 fiction, and those I have are a revealing interview with writer Charles Lambert and an interesting piece on the issue of collecting short stories in volumes by Ailsa Cox (instigator of the Edge Hill Prize for short story collections), including a report on a recent linked conference. There's also an article by me on the critical response to Anne Enright's The Gathering and its implications for the way we read now and the contemporary status of fiction.

Succour launch at the Briton's Protection

The literary magazine scene is thriving again, thanks to the web, and one mag which has achieved prominence and a good deal of acclaim is Succour. Last night the latest and seventh issue was launched in the Briton's Protection pub here in Manc, and John and I went along and met Max Dunbar, one of Succor's several UK regional editors, and Managing Editor Anthony Banks, and heard two great readings by contributors to the current issue, Animals. Nick Royle's striking story 'The Bee Eater' displayed his trademark style, whereby everyday reality is slyly shifted into the surreal and indeed shockingly weird. Aidan Clarkson's poem, 'Feathers, Families', dealing with a strange mass metamorphosis, was equally arresting and otherworldly - all the more so for its deadpan demotic tone. Great stuff: I bought the mag forthwith.

Nick and Anthony Banks also read stories of their own which had appeared in the London Magazine (which, in spite of recent Arts Council cuts, is still going strong due to the energetic efforts of the acting editor Sarah Mae Tuson and her team). John also read: his recent serious illness has somehow pushed him back into writing poetry after years away from it and writing academic texts instead, and last night he put his toe back in the reading water with a very short poem from his Peterloo collection, In the Footsteps of the Opium Eater.

It was a great evening, and great to drive home with a sense that the small magazine scene is buzzing once again.

Gearing up for the Blogstory, Manchester magazines and a reading

Just back from a meeting at Cornerhouse with Manchizzle blogger and writer Kate Feld, the brains behind the Manchester Blogstory commission. We talked about the story: less than a week to go now, and I've started on the first episode, which goes online next Tuesday - scarey! I haven't found it exactly easy coming up with a scenario which fits the format, allowing enough possibilities for developments of the story without creating dead ends. But I think I'm managing it, and I'm pretty hooked on the characters, so I hope others will be. I discovered that Kate conducted an interview for last winter's issue of Manchester's pretty impressive Revolvewire magazine (still on sale at Cornerhouse) with Sarah Hepola, who between 2004 and 2005 wrote a similar interactive fictional blog, The Education of Elisabeth Edelman, for the internet magazine The Morning News. In the interview Hepola says that she found reader interaction created a more boring story than she would have liked - people constantly voted for the safe options for her character - so I hope that doesn't happen here!

Kate and I also talked about the workshop we are running together in the run-up to the festival on 29th September (11 am - 1 pm at Manchester Digital Development Agency) for creative writers interested in beginning a blog or increasing their blogging skills in order to develop and promote their own writing.

And before I left, the brochure for the Festival arrived in the post - it looks like a great eclectic line-up of events.

And speaking of Manchester magazines, I'm delighted that this very morning Jen, my publisher at Salt, invited me to take part in a joint reading with Salt and the splendid litmag Transmission which specializes in short stories. (MMU at 6.30 on Thursday 11th October; MMU readings are open to the public.)