Short story collection
In which longer pieces of writing are found
IntroductionBefore we released Issue II of The Grind we made the decision not to include longer pieces of writing. We learned from experience that anything longer than a single page made the journal look text-heavy and cumbersome. Having said this, we did not want to abandon our origins as a publisher of short stories as we care deeply about the written word. Therefore, and because the calibre of short story submissions we had received was incredibly high, we decided to create a special edition of the journal.
This is what you have before you. Stories of love, heartbreak, comedy, the End of Days, pornography, and pretty much everything in between. We hope you enjoy it. |
Artist statementsBelow is our incomplete and, most likely, inaccurate collection of artist statements.
Angela Hughes: I’ve always loved to write but in 2011 I got to indulge my passion during a year-long MLitt course in Creative Writing. Since graduating in 2012, I’ve carried on writing for the sheer love of it, with some unexpected successes along the way including being short-listed for a Scottish Book Trust New Writers Scotland Award in 2012 and being published in New Writing Scotland anthology, Black Middens, in 2013. As well as working on a short story collection, my latest project is a creative non-fiction novel. Fiona MacLeod: I am a PhD student at the University of Nottingham, writing articles for the MHI blog (Fiona Birkbeck) and critical pieces for Manchester Literature Festival (Fiona MacLeod) My first novel Impostor (set partly in 18th century Scotland) has been optioned for film and television by Katya Jezzard and her agent Jaqui Fincham of Creative Media Management. My second novel is hanging around, tapping its fingers, while I write up my doctoral thesis but I am hoping to involve the use of Apple's i-author app to combine a new theory about gender differences within a narrative about a Freudian psychotherapist and a research scientist. Mark Nicholls: My name is Mark Nicholls (I publish under M.J. Nicholls), I live in Glasgow, and I heard about the journal through someone I was trying to ask out, but failed to, who I believe has some connection to the journal, but I never found out exactly what the connection was. I think the above qualifies as an "artist statement" of sorts... bio-wise I've been published in New Writing Scotland 31, Prime Mincer, Beeswax Magazine, and other obscure journals too tedious to list. I'm currently co-editor of the small press Verbivoracious. Hugh Reid: My background is in Phyiscs which I taught until gratefully accepting early retirement two years ago. I am currently working on an SF concept which hopefully will form a trilogy of books. My interests are in the nature of the Cyborg and the question of Consciousness. What does it mean to be human in an increasingly prostheticised world, from the simple computer mouse, through AI headsets to cochlear and visual implants? What does the future hold as the cyber moves from therapeutics into the field of entertainment? Where does Love stand in all this? I have further adopted as an artistic constraint that the popular SF concept of the Singularity - when digital computers evolve to such a level that they become conscious - is a technical impossibility. I like to call it the Penrose Principle. What new creativity can arise from a rigorous fidelity to current brain science in the same way that new writing arose when SF authors abandoned faster than light travel? Swiss Morgan: morgan downie is an unreliable narrator with a deep mistrust of artist's statements. he has a chequered past involving poetry, short story writing, visual, installation and textile art, book making, sculpture and all points in between. he believes all art can be contained in a decent bike ride. John Fagan: John Gerard Fagan is a writer from Scotland. He has an MA in Creative Writing and has had stories published in several magazines and anthologies, from Black Static to the Scottish Book Trust. He currently lives and writes in a tiny fishing village in Japan. Natalie Stypa: I always write about love. Anything else is dull in comparison. Women and their relationships, love, sex, violence. In my texts, I am trying to find those lines that hit a note, strike a sensation – contain what Barthes calls punctum when he talks about photography. The punctum is that which touches us, fascinates us, but cannot be explained. My texts celebrate this (unproductive) excess of sensations in the face of limits. As the Russian Formalist Victor Shklovsky would say, art must make the stony stoney, it must challenge our ordinary, callous perception. Grosz writes: “Art is how the body senses most directly”. For me, art is an epistemological category; it is how I perceive the world. 'Choices' is an excerpt from Natalie's upcoming debut novel 'FUCK ART'. http://the-alterreal.tumblr.com Robert Smith: I'm a Scottish writer and typically write about the west of Scotland(stories have appeared in Chapman, Gutter, Barcelona Review. . .). A few years ago, though, a friend told me a story about working as a cinematographer in the pornography industry in the San Fernando Valley, and the life of the male actors. Paul Bruce: I am a writer and film-maker, my films are all self-written and have won 7 awards and featured in the cultural Olympics in London, I have one film in the showcase of the American Online Film Awards and am currently writing for a web series sitcom. I have been writing short stories since the early nineties. Emi James: Bit of a cunt. No, really. |