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My short story ‘My Own True Name’ is now available to read online as part of the The Masters Review Best Emerging Writers series. The print edition of the anthology, selected by novelist Gina Chung, will be published in May (US only). The story is pure fiction, but it was inspired by conversations I had with many of the women who looked after my mother in the final years of her life. (Click here to read the story on The Masters Review website.)
This week I heard that one of my stories has been chosen by novelist Gina Chung for the 13th Masters Review Anthology, which will be published in the States in May 2025. I’m so pleased!
A pleasurable end to the year with news from Kitchen Table Quarterly that they have nominated my essay ‘Circus Loves’ for the Pushcart Prize. The picture comes from my grandmother’s photo album of 1914. It shows her teen crush, the circus rider Othelia Orlando.
Writing this essay for Psyche about why I don’t drive took me on many detours. I thought about public transport. I thought about road movies and the idea of freedom. I thought about climate change and all the many reasons why we need to find alternatives to cars. But I kept coming back to my mother who loved to drive. Here she is in 1968 with our first family car. You can read the essay here.
I’m so pleased that a story of mine won first prize in the 2021 Trip Fiction ‘Sense of Place’ contest. The judges were novelists Victoria Hislop and Rosanna Ley, publisher Katharina Bielenberg (MacLehose Press), and Tina Hartas (founder of TripFiction).
The story is a fictionalised account of the journey my grandmother made in October 1940, leaving her home in Bangkok to return to Sweden because of the war. You can read it here:
I’m currently researching a creative nonfiction book – working title, Cool Hearts: the story of a Swedish family – and my enquiries have led me into many interesting side alleys. One of the by-products is this essay on Henri Bergson, the nature of time and memory, and my Swedish grandmother, which was published in the digital magazine Aeon/ Psyche (8 September 2020).
I’ve written a short piece on the 1918 Spanish Flu epidemic in Sweden for Marina Benjamin’s pop-up Corona blog, Garden Among Fires. It’s the first outing for material I’ve been working on for some time now. Postcard from Gothenburg, 1918.
Thrilled to see Live Show, Drink Included picked as one of four short story collections that stood out for writer, reviewer and book blogger Ian Critchley in 2019. Great company to find myself in. This is a snippet from his blog post:
To read his full selection of Books of the Year, 2019, click here.
The prize giving ceremony for the Edge Hill Award was on Friday 25th October at Waterstones Piccadilly. David Szaly won both the single story prize and the overall £10K prize for Turbulence, his collection of linked stories about plane journeys. Szaly is brilliant writer, named as one of Granta’s Best of Young British Novelists in 2013 and shortlisted for the Booker in 2016, so I have no complaints. Below are pictures of the three of us debut authors reading: Wendy Erskine from her collection Sweet Home, me from Live Show, Drink Included and Chris Power from Mothers. Then there’s Judge Tessa Hadley making her speech and handing David Szaly his award. After that we migrated to the 5th floor for drinks and canapes till 10pm, then on to the pub for more conversations. A wonderfully warm and light-hearted occasion.
Vicky Grut 