short story Archives - Story Radio Podcast

Dogs by S P Murphy

A woman at home with her baby during lockdown hears the unsettling sound of dogs fighting in the street. It isn’t long before she is in danger herself – and she has to decide how to fight back.

Dogs by S P Murphy was first published in Litro Magazine.

S. P. Murphy is an American writer and arts consultant living in London. He has served on the board of PEN America and the Victoria and Albert Museum. He writes short stories and contributes articles on culture and politics to various publications. He is working on his first novel, a love story set in the US in 1970, when the nation was, like today, tragically divided.

This episode was produced by Tabitha Potts.

Season 3

A terrible thing has happened by Elinora Westfall

It is March 1941 during the Second World War, and a young evacuee, Tabitha, is fascinated by the stories about a famous author who lives nearby.

Content warning: contains references to suicide.

The story is written and read by Elinora Westfall. Influenced by David Bowie, Virginia Woolf and Sally Wainwright, Elinora Westfall is a lesbian writer of stage, screen, fiction, poetry and radio from the UK.

Her novel, Everland, was selected for the Penguin and Random House WriteNow Editorial Programme, and her short films have been selected by Pinewood Studios & Lift-Off Sessions, Cannes Film Festival, Raindance Film Festival, Camden Fringe Festival and Edinburgh Fringe Festival, while her theatre and audio shows have been selected by The British Library and performed in London’s West End and on Broadway, where she won the award for Best Monologue.

The story was produced by Tabitha Potts.

Music used courtesy of Timbre of Freesound.org

Photo of Virginia Woolf By George Charles Beresford – Filippo Venturi Photography Blog, Public Domain.

https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=50293324

Season 3

Woman dressed as man sitting in wooden chair smoking cigar and laughing

Life in the dressing room of the theatre

This short story is about a young woman whose heart is stolen by a mysterious magician.

The story is written and read by Elinora Westfall. Influenced by David Bowie, Virginia Woolf and Sally Wainwright, Elinora Westfall is an Australian/British lesbian actress and writer of stage, screen, fiction, poetry and radio from the UK.

Her novel, Everland has been selected for the Penguin and Random House WriteNow 2021 Editorial Programme, and her short films have been selected by Pinewood Studios & Lift-Off Sessions, Cannes Film Festival, Raindance Film Festival, Camden Fringe Festival and Edinburgh Fringe Festival, while her theatre shows have been performed in London’s West End and on Broadway, where she won the award for Best Monologue.

Elinora is also working on The Art of Almost, a lesbian comedy-drama radio series as well as writing a television draoma series and the sequel to her novel, Everland.

The story was produced by Tabitha Potts.

Season 3

Eventide by Kae Hart

A young woman spends time with her younger sister Anya in a deserted playground, while wrestling with her inner demons.

The story was written by Kae Hart. Kae is a university student who learned to speak by telling stories to everyone who would listen. The cashier at the local grocery store was her first fan. Since then, she has written stories, poems, and novels, and hopes to continue to do so.

The story was read by Claire Lubert.

Claire has been working for Humanitarian Organisations for the last eight years (currently Médecins Sans Frontières). She is also involved in writing projects and is a voice artist, having previously trained at Rada and worked as an actor in TV, Film and theatre. She is based in SW London.

Eventide was produced by Tabitha Potts.

The photograph used in this episode is courtesy of Cherie Durbin.

Season 3

Picture of boy in tree, vintage, film camera

Killing the Serpent by Doug Jacquier

A young Australian boy learns some difficult lessons about temptation and faith when he meets another boy from a local religious cult.

This story was written and read by Doug Jacquier. He has lived in many places across Australia, including regional and remote communities, and has travelled extensively overseas. His poems and stories have been published in Australia, the US, the UK and Canada. He blogs at Six Crooked Highways.

This episode was produced by Tabitha Potts.

Recording of artist Jimmie P Rodgers under Creative Commons License 0 from qubodup at Freesound.org

Photo by Vintage Film Pics at Morguefile.com.

Season 3

The Glass Wall by Goran Baba Ali

Goran Baba Ali, author of The Glass Wall, talks to Martin Nathan, Tabitha Potts and Miki Lentin about his novel and reads a brief extract.

The Glass Wall is about a teenage refugee who must relive the pain of his past to enter the land waiting behind a glass wall. Will his story be convincing enough to guarantee his safety?

Goran Baba Ali has written and published various literary and journalistic works in Kurdish, Dutch and English. The Glass Wall is his debut novel in the English language.

As an ex-refugee, originally from Iraqi Kurdistan, he has personally experienced some of the protagonist’s hardship in this novel, including a few weeks living in a desert.

The producer of this episode was Martin Nathan.

Sound effects taken from Freesound.org and licensed under the Creative Commons 0 license.

Season 3

Efflorescence by Miki Lentin

Efflorescence, a short story by Miki Lentin takes us into that time when a man bumps into a friend unexpectedly while on an evening walk, with surprising consequences.

Efflorescence is part of a collection of short stories released by Miki Lentin called I er Core, published by Afsana Press that is available to buy as an ebook and paperback with proceeds of all sales going to the refugee charity foodKIND.

Miki Lentin took up writing while travelling the world with his family a few years ago. He completed an MA in Creative Writing at Birkbeck in 2020 and was a finalist in the 2020 Irish Novel Fair for his first book Winter Sun.

He has been placed highly in competitions including Fish Publishing Short Memoir 2020 and 2022 and Leicester Writes and has been published in Litro, Storgy, Story Radio, MIR amongst others. Miki volunteers with refugee charity foodkind in Greece, and dreams of one day ru ing a café again. Find him on Twitter @mikilentin or read his work on his website.

https://www.mikilentin.net/my-writing

The reader was Francis Gilbert.

Francis Gilbert has been writing fiction for many years. He is best known for his memoir, I’m A Teacher, Get Me Out of Here (2004 Short Books), his story of working as a young, incompetent i er-city school teacher in the 1990s. It was serialized as Radio 4’s Book at Bedtime, and spawned a sequel, Teacher on the Run (2006 Short Books).

His novel The Last Day of Term (2011 Blue Door Press) is also set in school. However, more recently he has explored more personal topics in his fiction: Who Do You Love (Blue Door Press 2017) is about a middle-aged man reflecting upon a university romance, and Snow on the Danube (2019) is about a brother and sister torn apart by the Second World War.

For the past few years, he has been working on writing short stories. He was delighted to read Miki Lentin’s powerful short fiction, which he feels shares many similarities with his own work in its depiction of tortured, emotional men. He really loved Miki’s story Efflorescence, and hopes other people enjoy his reading of it, as much as he liked recording it.

His day job is as senior lecturer in education at Goldsmiths, but his heart truly remains in writing and reading fiction.

http://www.francisgilbert.co.uk

http://www.bluedoorpress.co.uk

This episode was produced by Tabitha Potts.

Season 3

Interview with Lindsay Gillespie and A Summoning Spell by Lindsay Gillespie

This month Martin Nathan interviews Lindsay Gillespie who was a finalist in the Costa Short Story prize this year with her story Pholas Dactylus. The Costa prize involves them recording the three stories and then a public vote.

You can also listen to one of the stories she wrote for Story Radio two years ago, A Summoning Spell, read by Saskia Butler.

If you would like to read her prize-winning story you can download Pholas Dactylus here.

Warning: A Summoning Spell contains some adult language and is not suitable for under-18s.

Season 3

The Necropolis Railway by Tabitha Potts

A clerk goes to a funeral and meets a mysterious young woman in this short story set on the famous Victorian ‘Ghost Train’.

This story was written and produced by Tabitha Potts.

The story was read by Nigel Fyfe.

Nigel Fyfe is an actor and voiceover artist. Alongside stage and screen work, he has recorded audio drama with Wireless Theatre and Ragged Foils, and a number of audiobooks.

The photograph used to illustrate this podcast is by John Cunliffe of Scope Enterprise and is from the Hathaways of Haworth blog.

Sounds under CC-BY 3.0:

Steam Train 1.wav by Benboncan

Podcast Season 2

Stray Dogs and Cowboys by Steve Wade

An Irish farmer, Liam Og, decides to leave his farm to his unknown American nephew.

This short story was written and read by Steve Wade.

Steve Wade’s short story collection, ‘In Fields of Butterfly flames’, was published in October 2020 by Bridge House Publishing. His fiction has been published and anthologised in over fifty print publications. His short stories have won, been placed and shortlisted in numerous writing competitions.

Winner of the Short Story category in the Write By the Sea Writing Competition in 2019. First Prize Winner of the Dun Laoghaire/Rathdown Writing Competition 2020.

www.stephenwade.ie

This short story was produced by Tabitha Potts.

Sounds under CC0:

Sad Violin.wav by Cunningar0807

Image of violin:

Photo by lucas mendes on Unsplash