News from Rob Mimpriss

20th November 2015: The Short Story: Compression and Resonance

A workshop led by Rob Mimpriss | Friday November 20th, 1-3pm, Ucheldre Arts Centre, Holyhead.

The short story has a rather unusual niche in world literature. Its position seems equidistant between the novel and the poem, emphasising resonance, compression and shapeliness of form, and some critics see it as intentionally marginal, exploring the significance, even the cosmic and spiritual significance, of obscure and impoverished lives. In this workshop and reading, I will explore my debt to writers such as Anton Chekhov, Raymond Carver and Kate Roberts, and show how the short story is assembled by focusing on and mulling over a single, seemingly insignificant, incident.

Rob Mimpriss is the author of three short-story collections: Reasoning, For His Warriors and Prayer at the End. Of his recent stories, ‘Hamilton Park’ was a runner up for the Rhys Davies Award, and ‘Hart’s Reach’ appeared in Brush with Fate, an anthology of Welsh fiction in Arabic translation by Hala Salah Eldin. He has published criticism of the short fiction of Raymond Carver, Robert Olmstead and Richard Ford in New Writing, and has reviewed for New Welsh Review. In 2005 he was awarded a PhD in Creative and Critical Writing by Portsmouth University, and in 2011 he was elected to membership of the Welsh Academy.