Short Stories
In this week’s episode of the ABR Podcast we revisit Cate Kennedy’s short story ‘Sleepers’, which won second prize in the 2010 ABR Elizabeth Jolley Short Story Prize. ‘Sleepers’ was also included in Kennedy’s 2012 short-story collection Like a House on Fire. Cate Kennedy is an award-winning writer of fiction, non-fiction and poetry. Listen to Cate Kennedy’s ‘Sleepers’.
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This week on the ABR Podcast, we celebrate the 2023 ABR Elizabeth Jolley Short Story Prize shortlist over three episodes. In each episode, one of the three shortlisted authors will read their story. The overall winner of the Jolley Prize will be announced at an online ceremony on August 17. Proceeding in alphabetical order, Episode Three features ‘Our Own Fantastic’ by Uzma Aslam Khan, published in the August issue of ABR.
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This week on the ABR Podcast, we celebrate the 2023 ABR Elizabeth Jolley Short Story Prize shortlist over three episodes. In each episode, one of the three shortlisted authors will read their story. The overall winner of the Jolley Prize will be announced at an online ceremony on August 17. Proceeding in alphabetical order, Episode Two features ‘The Mannequin’ by Rowan Heath, published in the August issue of ABR.
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This week on the ABR Podcast, we celebrate the 2023 ABR Elizabeth Jolley Short Story Prize shortlist over three episodes. In each episode, one of the three shortlisted authors will read their story. The overall winner of the Jolley Prize will be announced at an online ceremony on August 17. Proceeding in alphabetical order, Episode One features Winter Bel’s ‘Black Wax’, published in the August issue of ABR.
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My father died twenty-eight years ago this December. Each anniversary, I watch a movie that we enjoyed together, or would have. This year, a week before the day, I learn that the hotel his company owned has permanently closed. I’m given this news through an article titled ‘New York City’s historic hotels are owned – and destroyed – by Asians.’
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They met by the smashed call box at the intersection of Homan and 16th, as proposed in her perfectly spelt text message earlier that night.
... (read more)‘How many times?’ the voice on the other side shouted. ‘How many fucken times? Will youse ever listen?’ The brick wall between the two change-rooms might have been cardboard.
On this side – the visiting team’s side – the boys sucked on their orange quarters, all ears. Dom Russo, the team manager, screwed up hi ...
The forbearance of those writers who entered the Australian Book Review and Reader’s Feast Short Story Competition has been as exemplary as their commitment to short fiction. I am pleased to be announce the shortlist:
Ian McFarlane: ‘A Balance of Probabilities’
Katarina Mahnic: ‘Flying Recipe’
B.E. Minifie: ‘There Has to be a Resemblance’
Carrie Tiffany: ‘Dr Darnell’s Cure’
Susan Yardley: ‘The End Is Where We Start From’
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D likes my photograph, the one of me in the 1940s shorts and tight T-shirt, the one I posted to the internet just so that he would see. He watches my story – watches as I make my way through Italian museums, drink Campari, buy a straw hat with a grosgrain band. It is peak summer. It is Italy. It is forty degrees. I have to tell you: I hold four tenets to be true. I still believe in trains that run on time, in the solemn power of dandelion wishes, that ripe heirloom tomatoes are the embodiment of the sensual life, and that you shouldn’t use people. Hold fast, and the compass will point true north.
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One interpretation of the facts is that Jean-Michel Houvrée produced his most arresting art only after he had died. Born in 1694 in Ariège-sur-Mentouin, a village a few kilometres north of Carcassone, to a moderately prosperous inn-owner and his wife, he was brought up a Catholic but embraced Jansenism in his early twenties. He was educated at the local village school until the age of fourteen: an indifferent scholar in the classroom, he was an avid student of the natural world. He was a good boy, obedient to his parents, kind to his friends, open to the loving grace of God. He had big feet, thick black hair, dark brown eyes, a shy smile. Any free time he had after assisting his father in the inn, he would wander the sun-baked lanes and fields carrying cheese and home-baked bread in his bag, beneath a sky colour-washed fresh each day by his Creator.
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