A Small, Good Thing
A Small, Good Thing
Podcast Description
"A Small, Good Thing" is a podcast about short fiction. In every episode, I get to discuss the short story form with writers, academics, publishers, and anyone who shares a passion for short stories.
Podcast Insights
Content Themes
The podcast explores themes around short fiction, including publishing challenges, writing techniques, and the cultural significance of short stories. Episodes feature discussions on specific works by authors such as John Cheever and Yiyun Li, as well as insights into initiatives like short story competitions. Additionally, it touches upon the evolution of narrative styles and engages with the academic perspectives on storytelling.
“A Small, Good Thing” is a podcast about short fiction. In every episode, I get to discuss the short story form with writers, academics, publishers, and anyone who shares a passion for short stories.
Meet Tom Conaghan, founder of Scratch Books! In this episode, I ask Tom what it takes and what it’s like to run a publisher entirely dedicated to short fiction. Find out more about the origins of Scratch Books, their amazing publications and short story competition!
Works cited (in order of appearance):
John Cheever, “Reunion”, in A Vision of the World: Selected Stories, ed. by Julian Barnes (Vintage, 2021), pp. 199-203.
Reverse Engineering, ed. by Tom Conaghan (Scratch Books, 2022).
Reverse Engineering II, ed. by Tom Conaghan (Scratch Books, 2022).
Gaston Bachelard, The Poetics of Space, trans by. Maria Jolas (Beacon Press, 1969).
Conversations with David Foster Wallace, ed. by Stephen J. Burn (University Press of Mississippi, 2012).
Yiyun Li, Wednesday’s Child (Farrar, Strauss and Giroux, 2023).
Lydia Davis, “The Cornmeal”, in Can’t and Won’t (Farrar, Strauss and Giroux, 2014), p.33.
Louis MacNeice, “Snow”, in Collected Poems (Faber&Faber, 2015).
Tessa Hadley, After the Funeral (Penguin, 2023).
Organisations mentioned:
Scratch A4: https://www.scratch-books.co.uk/scratcha4competition
The word factory: https://thewordfactory.tv/
City Lit: https://www.citylit.ac.uk/
Podcast intro and outro credits: Shield, Leroy, Taylor Holmes, and Robert W Service. The shooting of Dan McGrew. 1923. Audio. Retrieved from the Library of Congress, .
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