14-14 June 2008

SMALL WONDERS – THE ART OF THE SHORT STORY

Tickets: 10

At its best, the short story form is an elegant and precise distillation of the human experience. This exclusive double-header sees two of its most celebrated exponents come together in one unmissable event. For Tobias Wolff – one of the great masters of the form – its challenges are its own rewards – for both writer and reader: ‘The reader really has to step up to the plate and read a short story.’ Best known on this side of the Atlantic for his dazzling memoirs This Boy’s Life and In Pharaoh’s Army, Wolff made his name – alongside Raymond Carver – for his short stories, many now contemporary American classics. Like Wolff, Dublin-born novelist Anne Enright cut her teeth on the short story form – from the New Yorker and the Paris Review to her Rooney Prize -winning first collection The Portable Virgin (1991). The follow-up to her Booker-winning novel The Gathering, Taking Pictures reveals a short story specialist at the top of her game, providing vivid snapshots of fractured lives with trademark subversive wit.

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