Publishers may still be a little wary of story collections, but Edinburgh audiences are flocking to hear authors who excel in this form.
Today's podcast brings together two writers of short fiction who have also been crossing borders since childhood.
Born in Buenos Aires in 1977, Andrés Neuman moved to Spain as a teenager. Hailed by Roberto Bolaño as one of the writers who would define 21st-century literature after publishing just one novel, Neuman has gone on to publish short fiction, novels and poetry.
He arrives in Edinburgh with translations of his latest novel, Talking to Ourselves, and a just-published collection of short stories, The Things We Don't Do. Neuman tells us his road-trip novel didn't catch light until he started writing about the one who stayed at home, why he told the story in three different modes and how reading is a much healthier activity than the dangerous business of writing. He finishes by reading a short story from the collection, Man Shot, inspired by a situation of acute and extraordinary danger faced by the real-life Argentinian writer Daniel Moyano.
Another tangling with the perils of authorship is Donal McLaughlin, who moved during his childhood like Neuman – or "emigrated" as his family always called it – from Derry to Scotland. His second collection of short fiction, Beheading the Virgin Mary, is a loose story cycle featuring a boy called Liam O'Donnell who also comes to Scotland from Northern Ireland. But it would be a mistake for readers to identify Liam too closely with his creator, McLaughlin insists. He explains how fiction allowed him to explore a particular perspective on the Troubles in a particular language, and why – despite the commercial pressures on writers to produce full-length novels – he's still committed to the freedoms of the shorter form.
Reading list
Talking to Ourselves by Andrés Neuman (Pushkin)
The Things We Don't Do by Andrés Neuman (Pushkin)
Beheading the Virgin Mary by Donal McLaughlin (Dalkey)
