Look back in wonder : how the endings of short stories can be their most powerful and effective distinguishing features

Drawing on her experiences as a writer and teacher of short fiction, the author offers an interrogation of the defining qualities of short stories, with a particular focus on how the ending of a narrative can be one of the most useful ways of teasing out generic differences between short fic-tion and other prose forms. A survey of critical and writerly opinion leads into a practical demon-stration of how endings work, with detailed reference to James Joyce’s Dubliners. The essay concludes by suggesting ways in which Dubliners prefigures the composite novels and story cy-cles that are prominent features of contemporary practice

Walking in the world of ruins : explorations in the processes and products of autobiographical fiction

I continue his [Sebald's] walks in the world of ruins, of what is dead. I continue his contact with a stimulating tendency of the contemporary novel, a tendency that opens new ground in between essay, fiction and autobiography... So writes Enrique Vila-Matas in his innovative text, Montano. In attempting to map this new ground, the processes and products of autobiographical fictions will be scrutinised with particular reference to questions of authenticity and voice, drawing examples from texts including James Frey's A Million Little Pieces, which problematise genre boundaries, question the relationship between reader and author, and demonstrate how life experience now, literally, has a price. The paper will conclude by proposing the first steps towards a reading and writing practice where, in the words of Goldberg, ‘every page trembles, vulnerable to manifold incursions - of prior texts, of future accidents, of reading and writing’