STRIKE! Short Story Club

We are thrilled to be sharing stories with the STRIKE! Short Story Club. Our monthly sessions are currently online and we are taking the opportunity to evolve our wonderful community of readers.

Stories shared will be an eclectic range of classic and contemporary short fiction. We are interested in translated work; modern and historical fiction; and British and international writers.

The group will explore themes, characters, language and craft. We are passionate about short stories and keen to build on the warm, inclusive atmosphere fostered by Zoe and Sophie before us.

It is an enormous privilege to celebrate reading, slowly and carefully, and we look forward to hearing the thoughts and insights of our brilliant Word Factory short fiction community. We hope you will join us!

Stories we’ve discussed

  • Zora Neale Hurston: Sweat
  • JD Salinger: A Perfect Day for Banana Fish
  • Miranda July: The Metal Bowl
  • Alison MacLeod: Sylvia Wears Pink in the Underworld
  • Lydia Davis: How Shall I Mourn Them and Jury Duty
  • Taiye Selasi: Driver
  • Eley Williams: Attrib.
  • Irenosen Okojie: Gunk
  • James Salter: Twenty Minutes
  • Helen Oyeyemi: A Brief History of the Homely Wench Society
  • Tobias Wolff: Bullet in the Brain
  • Muriel Spark: The Twins
  • AL Kennedy: Touch Positive
  • Angela Carter: Gun for the Devil
  • Sarah Hall: Vuotjarvi
  • Katherine Mansfield: Bliss
  • Ernest Hemingway: Hills Like White Elephants
  • Roald Dahl: The Great Automatic Grammatizator
  • Tessa Hadley: One Saturday Morning
  • Italo Calvino: All at One Point
  • Shirley Jackson: The Lottery
  • Hilary Mantel: The Assassination of Margaret Thatcher
  • John Burnside: Slut’s Hair
  • Angela Carter: Peter and the Wolf
  • Colin Barrett: The Clancy Kid
  • Lucy Wood: Lights in Other People’s Houses
  • George Saunders: In The End of Firpo in the World
  • Zadie Smith: Moonlit Landscape with Bridge
  • Hassan Blasim: The Iraqi Christ
  • Steven Millhauser: In the Reign of King Harad IV
  • Flannery O’Connor: A Good Man is Hard to Find
  • James Salter: Comet
  • Alice Munro: The Moons of Jupiter