At dawn on Sunday morning I drove down to Charleston, near Lewes in East Sussex, for the final day of the Small Wonder short story festival. The events were – as always – fascinating and diverse. Here are five things I learned there:
1 William Trevor used to be a serious sculptor. In a recorded interview with Small Wonder Artistic Director Diana Reich, following the announcement of his winning the inaugural Charleston-Chichester lifetime achievement award for excellence in short fiction, he said that he’d had a point in his life when he had to decide which pursuit to dedicate more of his time to. He said he felt there was a quality in his stories that just wasn’t there with his sculptures. You can listen to the full 17-min audio interview with William Trevor over on the Thresholds short story forum.
William Trevor wins the inaugural Charleston-Chichester lifetime achievement award for excellence in short fiction.
2 Katherine Mansfield had gonorrhoea and tuberculosis and yet continued to write even when her ‘pen felt like a walking stick’. I knew almost nothing about Katherine Mansfield before yesterday afternoon, but know a lot more now thanks to a brilliant talk Alison MacLeod gave on Mansfield’s life and work. Mansfield wrote about her stories in her journal while she was writing them, so we got to hear her story The Garden Party read by actress Susie Riddell, followed by quotes from Mansfield, including a journal entry written just after she’d completed the story. Quite magic.
3 Everyone but me listens to The Archers. When Diana was reading out Susie Riddell’s bio, the audience was listening quietly until she said, ‘…and Susie plays Tracy Horrobin in The Archers,’ when there was a loud, audience-wide gasp of recognition, followed be a few seconds of excited chatter. I’ve never listened to The Archers, and haven’t followed any soaps seriously since the after-school ritual of Neighbours and Home and Away back in the 80s. I’ve never seen an audience reaction quite like that before. The power of soaps. Amazing.
3 You can fix a leaking car radiator by breaking eggs into it. In Indiana anyway. This was part of a scene Brian Kimberling read from his book Snapper, in which some kooky locals help the protagonist patch up his truck, which is called the Gypsy Moth, and is held together by sticking plasters in places. Hilarious ’twas.
4 David Vann has just finished translating Beowulf. In the Charleston kitchen, (which is the best green room in the entire world), David talked about how he’d been translating it from the old English for 30 minutes a day, just as a fun project to do. I think I’d rather wrestle Grendel than attempt a feat like that.
It was an all-round awesome day. The short story world is small and wonderful, and in England, Charleston is its capital. I remember when I started going to book events in my early-twenties and knew no one. Before and after the events when people were milling about and chatting, I’d find a corner (a comfort zone for all of my early life) and get out a book, as I had no one to talk to and lacked the ability to begin a conversation in situations like this. But more and more, I started seeing familiar faces. Yesterday, there were so many friends at Small Wonder, I didn’t have time between events to exchange more than the briefest how-are-you-doings with them all. There were people there I’d taught on Arvon courses, people I’d met at readings, the Booktrust and Charleston and Radio 4 folk, and lots of other writers. It’s a community, and everyone in it is relentlessly lovely. I feel very lucky to be part of it. Big love in the room there was.
A special brunch at Small Wonder to celebrate the launch of the Charleston-Chichester lifetime achievement award.
This was the tenth anniversary of the festival – happy birthday Small Wonder! If you’re a story fan and you’ve not yet been, go. It’s at the end of September every year. Go go go. Go go. You’ll love it.
Lovely post, Adam, thank you – I had exactly the identical experience the first time I went to Small Wonder, knowing no-one, sitting in a corner with a book feeling very shy, and then the second time, years later, was so different and magical! Of course, access to The Kitchen does change it all 😉 (I don’t listen to The Archers either, I think we’re doing okay without it.)
Thanks Tania 🙂
Wonderful! I really wanted to go to this but it clashes with my end-of-summer festival in southern Italy. Torn between two lovers.. feelin’ like a fool.. (why do these songs still pop into my head?) Best, cat
What a delicious dilemma to have Cat 🙂
Sounds great. I’ll be at the end of my MA by the end of next September so will have to treat myself and attend next year’s. And I’m another who, despite listening to a fair amount of Radio 4 these days, has never listened to the Archers.
Cool. Hope the last year of your MA goes well Dan. And welcome to the club.
But it’s ALWAYS in induction week, so I can’t go until I retire. Ask them to move it, please!
Felicity, you may have to retire early.
I love the idea of a short story festival, and I’ve thought about going last couple of years, but then I’ve looked at the lineups. There are so many more novelists than short story writers represented that I haven’t bothered. I can see novelists without having to travel all the way down to Charleston (lovely as it is).
Hi Elsie – I go there every year, and while I can’t make it to all of the events, I can only recall one time, about three years ago, when there was a writer on stage reading from a novel – Joseph O’Connor, who is also a story writer, and who, in the Q&A, talked a lot about short stories, including a brilliant anecdote about how he became a story writer in his youth by copying out, word for word, a story by John McGahern, and then writing it again but changing a couple of words, and then writing it out again and changing some more, and doing this over and over till the story became his own.
I noticed that Jhumpa Lahiri was there this year talking about her new novel (I couldn’t make it to that event), but of course she’s also an award-winning short story writer, and so I’m guessing that she would have been talking about her stories too. The audience is there for great short stories, and that’s what they get, in abundance. So don’t be put off if you see an occasional novelist in the line-up – whatever’s being discussed is always fascinating, and as a story fan, you’ll go home more than sated. When I go there for the weekend events, I reach short story saturation point by the evening after a full day of events and can’t take any more in. I go home with stories leaking out of my ears.