The Robert Burns Centre saw the welcome return last week of two well-kent writers who took part in a Short Story Evening. Linda Cracknell, who has been involved with the CREATE Team doing workshops in Dumfries and Galloway schools, and Sara Maitland, Galloway’s own homegrown writer who grew up near Dalbeattie. Sara recently returned to live in Galloway with her husband who is a dairy farmer.
Sara and Linda are also well- known to each other as Sara was Linda’s tutor when as a young writer she embarked on an Open College of Arts course. They also worked together again on a British Council led project, pairing established British writers with young African writers being mentored and tutored through email.
The Short Story Evening was extremely lively and enjoyable, chaired with great skill and dexterity by local writer and lecturer Tom Pow.
The writers began by reading from their new collections of short stories, The Searching Glance by Linda Cracknell and Far North and Other Stories by Sara Maitland. One of Sara’s stories has been turned into a major film starring Sean Bean. Sara noted that publishers found it prudent to advertise such facts on the front covers of their books!
Each writer demonstrated a very different style; Linda’s story – And the Sky was Full of Crows was a densely crafted love story with tragic implications full of colourful, visual imagery. One phrase that stuck in my mind was “the glamorous colours of pheasants”. She explores themes of loss and abandonment and laughingly described the stories as her misery stories and said that she found it hard to get away from these themes.
Sara’s story “Swans” is rooted in the Galloway landscape. In it she explores the theme of silence using the framework of the traditional fairy tale Seven Swans.
Tom asked her why she used this tradition and she replied candidly that as she is very lazy and these stories had persisted for two thousand years in many cultures, it meant she knew they worked and therefore didn’t have to come up with a new one.
Tom Pow commented that Linda’s influences are from a naturalistic/Chekhovian line, but that Sara uses sources of fairytales and myths and her work is derived from the oral tradition. There was no shortage of questions from an interested and enthusiastic audience, but Sara summed up the short story most succinctly:
“ a short story is a poem that doesn’t have to scan and a novel that doesn’t have to bother with the characters’ psychology.”
The evening finished with recommendations of the panel’s favourite short stories, and included titles by Janice Galloway, A.L. Kennedy, Ailsa Cox, Grace Paley and Clare Keegan.
Reviewed by Catriona Taylor
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