Alice Munro s standing as a major contemporary author has long been acknowledged in her native Canada, especially among her fellow writers. Her reputation developed slowly, from small magazines and radio in the fifties, to three Governor General s Awards and regular appearances in The New Yorker. As a short story writer she is working within a critically neglected genre. Yet short fiction displays an intensity of language and experience that is rarely sustainable across longer forms. Drawing on Bakhtinian theory, Ailsa Cox looks at ways in which Munro develops the short story s affinity with the present moment to suggest a fluid and ever-changing reality.

New essays engaging with the developing field of literary geography to devote attention to the "regional" settings of Munro's stories and how they affect her characters' development or stasis. Alice Munro, the 2013 Nobel Prize laureate in Literature, has revolutionized the architecture of the short story. This collection of essays on Munro engages with literary geography, an emergent interdisciplinary field that is located at the interface between human geography and literary studies and is one of the most salient manifestations of the ongoing spatial turn in the arts and humanities. Critical readings of Munro's stories have labeled her literary production "regional," since she sets the majority of her short stories in the area of rural Ontario where she grew up. Until now, however, little attention has been devoted to the role of that location in the stories and tothe way that particular setting interacts with her characters' development or stasis. This collection contains eleven essays organized in two parts: first, Conceptualizing Space and Place: Houses, Landscapes, Territory; and second, Close Readings of Space and Place. Contributors: Corinne Bigot, Lynn Blin, Giuseppina Botta, Fausto Ciompi, Ailsa Cox, Christine Lorre-Johnston, Robert McGill, Claire Omhovere, Anca-Raluca Radu, Eleonora Rao, Caterina Ricciardi. Christine Lorre-Johnston is a senior lecturer in English at the Sorbonne Nouvelle in Paris. Eleonora Rao teaches English and American literatures at the University of Salerno.

This new edition of Writing Short Stories has been updated throughout to include new and revised exercises, up-to-date coverage of emerging technologies and a new glossary of key terms and techniques. Ailsa Cox, a published short-story writer, guides the reader through the key aspects of the craft, provides a variety of case studies and examples of how others have approached the genre and sets a series of engaging exercises to help hone your skills. This inspiring book is the ideal guide for those new to the genre or for anyone wanting to improve their technique.

This new edition of Writing Short Stories has been updated throughout to include new and revised exercises, up-to-date coverage of emerging technologies and a new glossary of key terms and techniques. Ailsa Cox, a published short-story writer, guides the reader through the key aspects of the craft, provides a variety of case studies and examples of how others have approached the genre and sets a series of engaging exercises to help hone your skills. This inspiring book is the ideal guide for those new to the genre or for anyone wanting to improve their technique.

Alice Munro s standing as a major contemporary author has long been acknowledged in her native Canada, especially among her fellow writers. Her reputation developed slowly, from small magazines and radio in the fifties, to three Governor General s Awards and regular appearances in The New Yorker. As a short story writer she is working within a critically neglected genre. Yet short fiction displays an intensity of language and experience that is rarely sustainable across longer forms. Drawing on Bakhtinian theory, Ailsa Cox looks at ways in which Munro develops the short story s affinity with the present moment to suggest a fluid and ever-changing reality.

Long regarded as an undervalued and marginalised genre, the short story is undergoing a renaissance. The Short Story celebrates its unique appeal. Practitioners and scholars address the issues facing short story criticism in the 21st century. Author A.L. Kennedy shares the pleasures and frustrations of writing the short story in the literary marketplace. This is followed by an assessment of recent attempts to promote short story readership in the UK. Other contributors look at forms such as the short-short and the short story sequence. The range of authors discussed includes Martin Amis, Anita Desai, Salman Rushdie and James Joyce. The short story is the most international of genres; this is reflected in chapters on Jorge Luis Borges and Italo Calvino and on Japanese short fiction. Postcolonial and translation theory are combined with the close reading of specific texts. Neglected authors, such as the Welsh writer Dorothy Edwards and the colonial figure Frank Swettenham, are re-evaluated and we also consider genre writing, with chapters on crime fiction and Ray Bradbury's Martian Chronicles. Integrating theory and practice, The Short Story will appeal both to writers and to students of literary criticism.