short story Archives - Page 2 of 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

Season 2

Loverman by Lindsay Gillespie

Livingstone Franklin, a hospital cleaner, has a side hustle as a soul singer – and a crush on a beautiful colleague.

This story is written by Lindsay Gillespie, a Lewes-based writer. It is read by Luke Blackwood-Stevenson.

The producer is Martin Nathan. Martin Nathan has worked as a labourer, showman, pancake chef, fire technician, and railway engineer. His short fiction has been published by Tangent Press, HCE and Grist and his poetry has appeared in Finished Creatures, Erbacce and Aesthetica.

His novel – A Place of Safety is published by Salt Publishing. In 2020 he has been shortlisted for the Woodward International Playwriting Prize and the Nick Darke Award.

Sounds under CC-BY 3.0:

Janie Joelle accapella.wav by juskiddink

Photo by Octavio Lopez at Morguefile.com

Season 2

Photograph of Waterloo Station clock by Martin Nathan

Jacqueline by Tatum Anderson

A young woman leaves Jamaica for the UK, hoping to emulate her cousin Jacqueline by working as a nurse. When she arrives, nothing is quite as she expected it to be.

Jacqueline was written by Tatum Anderson. She is a journalist and writer from London. She received an MA In Creative Writing at Birkbeck, University of London and is now working on a PhD there in the autumn.

She has recently completed her first novel about Jamaican soldiers in the First World War which was Highly Commended in the Blue Pencil Agency First Novel Award 2020. She is now working on a second novel.

The reader is Juliet Jordon. She is a recent Drama, Applied Theatre and Performance graduate. She is doing an MFA (Master in Fine Arts) in directing. She studied Acting at Morley College London on the Performing Arts HND course.

This story was directed and produced by Martin Nathan. Martin Nathan has worked as a labourer, showman, pancake chef, fire technician, and a railway engineer. His short fiction has been published by Tangent Press, HCE and Grist and his poetry has appeared in Finished Creatures, Erbacce and Aesthetica. His novel A Place of Safety is published by Salt Publishing.

Website: http://www.martinnathan.co.uk

The music and image used in this episode are both reproduced with the permission of Martin Nathan.

Season 2

Ride the Peter Pan by Allison Whittenberg

A young woman travels from her old life to her new, from the North to the South, on a Greyhound bus.

Content warning: this story mentions rape.

A Whittenberg is a Philadelphia native who has a global perspective. If she wasn’t an author she’d be a private detective or a jazz singer. She loves reading about history and true crime. Her novels include Sweet Thang, Hollywood and Maine, Life is Fine, Tutored and The Sane Asylum.

This short story was read by Antonia White.

The producer was Tabitha Potts.

The cover photograph was taken by R Miller on Flickr and is used under a Creative Commons Attribution License. It has been cropped.

Podcast Season 2

Left Watching by R D Mouton

Four men, friends since childhood, walk into a wood, where they find a pile of bones. This strange discovery will change their lives forever.

RD Mouton is an American Writer and Freelancer. He is currently pursuing a career in writing and completing his current projects, a short story collection and a young adult novel. He can be found on Twitter as @RDMakes.

Photo by Koan courtesy of Morguefile.com

Sound effect used are adapted from woodsbirds.wav by Sparrer on Freesound.org under the Attribution License

The producer is Tabitha Potts

Podcast

The Death of Brutus

The narrator is a health care aide who cares for a disabled woman (Betty) as best as possible and tends to her many hamsters, including Brutus, with the ultimate compassion.

It seems that Betty’s real confidant and friend is not the hamster she obsesses over in the story, but the young man who cleans out the hamster cages, cooks her meals, and buries her once-beloved rodents in the backyard.

This story originally appeared in Fleas on the Dog Online in 2020.

Mark Tulin is a poet, short story writer, and author residing in Ventura. He also has time to take pictures of the quirky people and strange objects he finds on Southern California’s beaches.

Gordon Lawrie (author and editor of Friday Flash Fiction) writes, “Tulin’s skill lies in raising his central characters above everything that surrounds them.”

Mark had appeared in Fiction on the Web, smokebox, Vita Brevis Press, The Literary Hatchet, Amethyst Review, Friday Flash Fiction, The Daily Drunk, and podcasts and anthologies. His books include Magical Yogis, Awkward Grace, and The Asthmatic Kid and Other Stories.

Keep up to date on all of Mark Tulin’s stories, poetry, and books at:

www.crowonthewire.com

Music (faded in and out) from Comming Back by Loco Lobo under a Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.