Recently, I travelled to Mexico with The British Council to read my short stories and talk about the state of the short story in the UK.  I was asked to do a blog post for their ‘Voices Magazine’ based on questions the editor sent me.

A brief snip…

‘You could perhaps draw the following analogy to compare the two: a short story would be like producing a photograph, while a novel would be more like making a film. A photographer will be thinking about every tiny detail in the frame and how it conveys meaning. It can be a character portrait or a moment captured in time. The novel, like a film, can take us on a journey, capture many lives, cover lifetimes/generations, discuss a society or the history of a culture. For example, when I wanted to capture what it was like for a whole generation of children to grow up in Northern Ireland knowing nothing else but The Troubles, I knew that this had to be done in a novel. To describe the day-to-day life and the cumulative effect of living in fear, on one boy, his family and the community at large, the reader needed to spend time with that boy, in that community.’

Read more here.  Find out about my short story class in London on Novemeber 7th here.