4 Questions for Laura Kenwright of Spread the Word and the London Short Story Festival
In the run up to BookMachine Week next month which focuses on short form publishing, we interviewed Laura Kenwright who is the Producer of the London Short Story Festival and Audience Development Manager for Spread the Word, London’s writer development organisation. The London Short Story Festival takes place at Waterstones Piccadilly from 18 to 21 June and features 65 writers and speakers including Ben Okri, Kevin Barry, Dame Marina Warner, Jon McGregor, D W Wilson, Laura van den Berg, Deborah Levy and May-Lan Tan. You can find Laura on Twitter @Lol_Valentine.
1) Do you read books on mobile devices?
I read short stories on my iPad or iPhone for work. There’s something about the act of reading on a mobile device that lends itself to the brief intensity of reading short stories, and I can’t quite transition to reading novels in this way. I don’t read on mobile devices when I’m at home. When I’m at home, I tend to associate mobile devices with things I need to do, so for the escapism I crave when reading, I read books. After spending many years building my book collection and never having a book clear-out – books can be found in every nook and cranny of my house. I still buy and listen to CDs and DVDs too – I can’t remove myself from the act of buying these physical cultural outputs that I used to save up for, lust after, buy with saved pocket money/ misappropriated dinner money and then cherish when I was younger.
2) Who are your favourite short story writers?
I love Claire Keegan very much; I get a bit teary when I remember how I felt after finishing reading Foster. Colin Barrett. AL Kennedy. George Saunders. Lorrie Moore. Raymond Carver. And brilliantly, some of my favourite short story writers are appearing at this year’s London Short Story Festival; May-Lan Tan, D W Wilson, Kevin Barry and Jon McGregor. I like short story writers that really master creating space by using sparse, beautiful language. I find that truly enables the reader to dive right in and inhabit these worlds.
3) Do you think there is a stigma towards short stories in the literary publishing world?
I laughed out loud when I read this question – it reminded me of a conversation I had recently with my friend who used to be a bookseller: ‘Is it still only booksellers and literature students who read short stories?’ Succinctly, I think there is a real passion and respect for short stories within the Editorial community and there’s a blockage of sorts between editors and marketing teams in bigger publishing houses. Specialist publishing houses that publish short story collections, for example, Stinging Fly and Salt bring rich, complex and important voices into the literature ecology. I would love to see big publishing houses really get behind some of their brilliant short story collections with the aplomb given to the more heavily promoted novels to grow the readership of short stories.
From my experience, short story readers tend to be very steeped and committed to the literary world and that’s one of the main reasons Spread the Word decided to start the London Short Story Festival last year – it’s another dedicated celebration of this special literary form joining a handful of excellent short story dedicated events (Small Wonder Festival, Word Factory and the Festival of the European Short Story are other special events in a short story lover’s calendar) bringing together writers and readers in the beautiful setting of Europe’s biggest bookshop, Waterstones Piccadilly. We try to make the festival as attractive to short story lovers and those new to the form as much as we can.
4) Are there any issues around young people reading shorter stories?
I am really passionate about engaging young people in literature that enables them to explore their identity and learning more about themselves and the world around them, and how different writers have unique approaches to self-expression. There’s very little focus on short stories in the GCSE syllabus; for example, AQA have only one set of stories by different authors available for study, opposed to choices of poetry, novels and dramatic texts. University Literature degrees also appear to silo short stories into the backbenches, although with growing popularity of creative writing BA degrees, there are more opportunities to become immersed in short stories at a formative age.
There are some excellent YA focused short story collections available – this list on Book Trust’s website is a brilliant place to start.
