Like a river
around rocks
Rachael Spellman journeyed to the first ever London Short Story Festival earlier this year
for a taste of small stories, silver voices and flickering pages. Here, she talks about meeting
short story writers Adam Marek, Robert Shearman and Dan Powell, and how she left feeling
like she had one more story in her bones
The sepia shadows and cool air were a
relief after the sun-glare of Piccadilly
streets. Standing at the entrance of
Waterstones bookstore, I took in the
soaring ceiling with its little clusters of
gold lights, the balconies with their brass
telescopes arranged at exploratory angles.
Between tall shelves of elegant dark wood,
people moved with the shuffle-murmur of
a lake’s heart. Bars of near-solid light came
through the wide-eye windows, to move
across round tables where a harlequin of
recent releases and
beloved classics were lit with the bright
sprays of blue delphiniums.
faces – a twitch of a smile here, a furrowed
brow there.
Wandering between clusters of globes
and tall rotating racks, I paused to run
a hand over the tooled leather covers of
journals, their blank pages waiting for the
eager memories of a traveller, the dreams
of a wandering life. Each shade of light
framing the room was a fresh perspective;
standing in the curving smile of a stairwell,
I could almost hear the thoughts of people
around me. Their outspread hands were
filled with the words reflected in their
Gold crescents fell from small lamps
hooked over shelves filled with fantasy,
horror and science fiction titles; they made
an eerie correlation with the flickering
blue of a Powerpoint screen at the far end
of the room. Patterned over with blacktalon trees and the wavering white of
Waterstones’ logo, the projection could
have been a still from Tim Burton’s Sleepy
Hollow, and made the perfect backdrop
for The Weird and Wonderful World of
The weekend of June 20-22 saw
Wterstones of Piccadilly – the largest
bookstore in Europe – play host to the
first London-based Short Story festival.
Organised by writer-development agency
Spread the Word, the festival’s free/
ticket-bought events made up a timetable
that included readings, masterclasses,
workshops and prize launches, each
carrying the agency’s integral message, ‘to
identify and nurture writing talent’.
Meeting the writers