All five short stories in the shortlist are excellent. The images of red echo the story’s title and allude to the ultimate consequences of Julie’s actions. Whether it is domestic violence or literary domination, men are supposed to take their medicine like, well, men). Your tags: remove all tags. Yet he walked in, half-listened to OMG and Hitting Trees, and got hooked. But a thumbs-up to all the finalists: it was a good quality short-list. Hitting Trees with Sticks is dedicated to sharing high quality original satirical comics with the world.

Overheard my son retelling the tale! So there’s my money for you: hovering between Other Men’s Gods and Hitting Trees. Hi there Hubert! Ride the airstreams with a winged demigod.

by Comma Press. Of course, my radio has no pause button and everyone knows that interruptions will cost any story some empathy. Indeed the emotional life might be heightened in crisis, and therein lies the tragedy for Rogers’ character: ‘That flicker of indignant fury runs through my veins like a shot of cognac.’. I was incredibly taken by ‘hitting trees with a stick’ since it touches home. We see that, while dementia might steal one’s memory, life itself can remain undimmed. West Sussex Scrape a drunk from the gutter. In this, her first short story collection, Jane Rogers displays her alchemical abilities to transport and transform her ideas across continents, minds and hearts, and she is kind enough to take us with her. The rotting apples act as a constant, sticky presence; a residue that seeps through the story and Alice’s thoughts. Admin Login. A fresh, naive anxiety permeates ‘Conception’.

She slides the reader, in imagination, to a snow-bound France, to Africa, to the Caribbean: she takes us into offices and libraries, under the sea and into the forest, and also into the vast untrodden country of memory that we car, ‘There is nothing predictable about a Jane Rogers story. But, iteration is not as cheapened in fiction. Watch helpless at the vanishing of the herd. (+44) 01243 816000 A weirdly affecting collection of stories about the trials, tribulations and triumphs of dealing with that impossible disease, life. Like a volcano crater. The children and I carried on listening on the journey home and then sat in the car on the drive till the end!! Hitting Trees with Sticks is unequivocally alive with such stories. Read here », EDGE HILL PRIZE SHORTLIST The title, ‘hitting trees with sticks’ comes together with the first and last paragraphs in a circularity that is one of the great techniques of the form. Hitting trees with sticks makes me think of the way they sometimes feed remains of animals to the same species—pigs, for example. Hitting Trees with Sticks is the title of one of the contenders for the BBC Short Story competition. Artwork. The title story, ‘Hitting Trees with Sticks’, is as poignant as it is sharp. We were totally enthralled and continued to discuss and empathise with the character. I prefer to call it an echo (at the end of a phrase or an idea from the beginning). Again, nothing is what it seems. Again, OMG employs the same Circularity of the Fixed Idea, ending the story on a witty reiteration of scripture that just takes the breath away. Diverse voices and sparkling debuts dominate today's contemporary short story collections. (Because this is an all-female list, from 2010, British men now have an iron-clad case for an APPLE PRIZE for male writers [or a BROWN PRIZE – one is never quite sure if the ORANGE PRIZE is named for the fruit or the colour], but I don’t suppose that is going tohappen. Is “Extortionist (Pacesetter)” by Chuma Nwokolo, Macmillan Education, from 1983 a work of yours? Indeed this shortlist is curious for getting the most ‘unsexy’ topics into contention. Your email address will not be published. You can also subscribe without commenting. This book is not yet featured on Listopia. Take that, you nasty tree monster!} Comics. Be the first to ask a question about Hitting Trees with Sticks. Read the full story here », THRESHOLDS is part of the So I got a gist of your reviews – at the risk of one or two mangled metaphors…. I’ve been meaning to write this for ages! But maybe I am missing something. It propels the reader into the story of an elderly woman who is suffering from dementia. College Lane Amidst the hot, grassy summer in the opening of ‘Morphogenesis’, a small boy finds the perfect spot to release himself as ‘his bladder gives a plaintive twinge’.

The rushed, ill-thought conception occurred in a holiday cottage that was filled with the messy remnants of its previous occupants’ broken marriage: The flavour of that house returned to haunt me in the dark days of our break-up. This ‘Fixed Idea’ is to the short story what the rhyme is to the poem. The beds strewn with clothes; the disconsolate dog; the dementedly whirring hamster. But Rogers’ use of colour creates an undercurrent of threat, one that takes the story off in a different, unpredictable direction. Stray into bear territory. That’s the mark of a powerful story – to come away from the narrative with a vivid, living picture, its images playing like a montage in the mind. Favorite comics and blogs. The fact that the story is told from the first-person point of view, of Celia, clearly displays her memory loss. Rogers handles this with deft precision and sensitivity, but it’s all the more unsettling because of that. The story unfolds in a high-energy, free-flowing form of prose that captures both the intensity of thought of a leading mind and the complexities of an unconventional life. "By the winner of the 2012 Arthur C. Clarke Award, Hitting Trees with Sticks is a collection of short stories, both previously published and new, brought together here for the first time. Here’s the reason: Hitting Trees with Sticks is probably the most tender. Is there any way we can get access to a hardcopy of the short stories??

A few good stories, but more miss than hit really. Daniel Carpenter • Elaine Chiew • Brian Coughlan • KM Elkes • Tracy Fells • Liam Hogan • Maxim Loskutoff • Mark Mayes • Jay Merill • Valerie O’Riordan • Gareth E Rees • Kathryn Simmonds • Hannah Stevens • Tom Vowler. It, “The more you saw of a person the less you knew them” | Follow the Thread, Editor Interviews: Rebecca O’Connor, The Moth, Teleological Cinema: Film as Language in Arrival. Hitting Trees with Sticks is the title of one of the contenders for the BBC Short Story competition. In the opening story of Hitting Trees with Sticks, the main character runs sewing classes for a charity in Africa and teaches women to sew bedspreads out of several rectangles of cloth. Chris is here; Alan’s brain reports that as objectively as it notes the sharp brilliance of the stars and their patterns on his knees through his old pyjamas. Hitting Trees with Sticks is the title of one of the contenders for the BBC Short Story competition. Yes, you want a second course but are happy to move on to the next flavours, usually completely different. Chichester

The shortlist for the year provides excellent material for passionate agreement and disagreement…. Yes, I probably lost my teens to two novels, The Extortionist and Dangerous Inheritance – although the latter wasn’t released until 1988 or so. Though it's yet another collection of tales about later life, complicated affairs and the breakdown of love, I really enjoyed the style and Rogers' obvious mastery of first person perspective.

Great short stories linger in the minds of readers like old photographs.

Survive the butterfly invasion. How can the novel compete? It’s as challenging a subject as you might expect, and as I read, I thought I knew the story’s direction. It is a magic story and the writer appears to tire of it all and simply, well, makes her heroine vanish into thin air. This is the BlogCentre for African Writing Magazine. It is one of five finalists. Alice needs a trailer – which is loaded with rotting apples – to take her grandmother’s bed away. Grieve for another man’s child. We’d love your help.

Julie falls for the ‘reds and purples of hibiscus’; the women choose ‘red flowered’ fabric to make bedspreads, and Julie believes that ‘With a small injection of capital’, the women could make ‘a range of these eye-catching fabrics’. She slides the reader, in imagination, to a snow-bound France, to Africa, to the Caribbean: she takes us into offices and libraries, under the sea and into the forest, and also into the vast untrodden country of memory that we carry around inside. It was the only one I didn’t get to hear properly. University of Chichester, University of Chichester Charts Life Office Misc. The winner should be announced by Monday 7th December (listen to podcasts here ).

Regards, Your email address will not be published. It is not just my money too: My eight-year-old is like most other children of this decade: it takes a visual snare with the pace of a Transformer movie to keep him in his seat. The title story, ‘Hitting Trees with Sticks’, is as poignant as it is sharp. It propels the reader into the story of an elderly woman who is suffering from dementia. (I hope this impression gained from your German article is correct). Receive a letter from a stranger. I opened the collection (its cover intriguingly sprinkled with scientific equations and… an artichoke?

Tumble over a cliff in pursuit of a cherished plaything. ed. But I probably wasn’t fair to it: that was the one story I had to interrupt now and again to get on with life. This is, of course, a relatively awkward conversation, but particularly so for this mother, who is now divorced from the girl’s father. http://www.kobobooks.com/ebook/Hitting-Trees-with-Sticks/book-opP-SlZOqEuxrcJHzGqWig/page1.html?s=9ZiPADNefU2vzjsVrpxU-Q&r=1, BBC National Short Story Award Nominee for 'Hitting Trees with Sticks' (2009), 17 Contemporary Short Story Collections to Devour. Anyhow, I have listened to all five stories and it is clear that I will not make a good judge.

Welcome back. Great craftsmanship for this genre. help@chi.ac.uk, Blog created by the University of Chichester, Marketing Department, 9 Years of Short Story Features, Expertise and Support for the Form – A Historic Archive, 2009-2018. fir cone, it’s definitely a fir cone) and began to read the first story, ‘Red Enters the Eye’. My review of the stories is available at My favourites are. My children are 12 and 8. Meaning 1: {I am bored, so} I use my sticks to hit trees. Thank you, Chuma, for some helpful remarks to them. Rogers handles this with deft precision and sensitivity, but it’s all the more unsettling because of that.

I wanted to know more. Her observation of our species is tender, precise, illuminating.’ – Hilary Mantel. Indeed the Moss Witch, which is perhaps the most atmospheric of the shortlist, ends quite unspectacularly. Spot on, Sharon; For some mad reason, Dangerous Inheritance comes up on catalogue and amazon.com as being written by ‘Chuma Nwokol’!