An online evening with Arachne Press featuring Laura Besley, David Hartley and Rob Walton
Sarah-Clare Conlon, Literature Editor
Join independent publishers Arachne Press as three of their writers read new work and discuss the differences between short stories and flash fiction, and flash fiction and poetry. Part of this year’s nine-day Brockley Max festival in south east London – celebrating its 20th anniversary from 28 May to 5 June with a mixture of online and in-person events – the evening brings together Manchester-based David Hartley with fellow Arachne writers Laura Besley and Rob Walton.
All three have books out this spring with Arachne, a micro publisher based in south London, specialising in short story anthologies, but branching out into single author flash fiction and poetry collections, and also novels. Laura Besley and David Hartley fall into the flash fiction category with 100neHundred and Incorcisms, respectively, both out this month, while Rob Walton’s This Poem Here came out in March, and his flash fiction appeared alongside David’s in Arachne’s 2018 anthology Dusk and alongside Laura’s in the 2019 anthology Story Cities: A City Guide For The Imagination, which had its northern launch at Blackwell’s Manchester.
The three panellists will look at form, genre and themes, attempting to get to the bottom of why a flash isn’t a prose poem and whether poems sometimes change into stories.
Brockley Max: Short, Flash, Poem? delves into the how and why of writing, asking whether authors know what a piece will turn out to be when they start the process. The three panellists will look at form, genre and themes, attempting to get to the bottom of why a flash isn’t a prose poem and whether poems sometimes change into stories, and pondering how dark fantasy has to get to qualify as horror – and if it’s allowed to be funny. As well as coming armed with their own conundrums to challenge each other, the participants will be taking questions from the audience, so do come prepared.
100neHundred is Laura’s second collection of flash fiction, following The Almost Mothers, published in March 2020 by Dahlia Books. Based in Leicester, she has been listed on TSS Publishing’s top 50 British and Irish Flash Fiction writers with her story ‘On Repeat’, which appeared in Reflex Fiction. Her work has appeared online with Ellipsis Zine, Fictive Dream and Spelk, and in print with Flash: The International Short Story Magazine and various anthologies.
David has a publishing-packed 2021, with Incorcisms following February’s Pigskin, published by Manchester’s Fly On The Wall Press, also bringing out his collection of short stories, Fauna, in September. He was also shortlisted for this year’s Oxford Flash Fiction Prize as well as the 2020 Bridport Prize, and his fiction has appeared in Ambit, Structo, Black Static and The Alarmist. Having recently finished a PhD, he is working on a complicated fantasy novel about autism and ghosts.
As well as his debut poetry collection, This Poem Here, Arachne has published Rob’s poems and stories in the anthologies Stations (2012), An Outbreak Of Peace (2018), Dusk (2018), Story Cities (2019) and Time And Tide (2020). His poetry has also been published by The Emma Press, Strix, Butcher’s Dog, Culture Matters and Atrium, while his short fiction has been published nationwide and abroad. He was the winner of the Bread and Roses Poetry Award in 2019, and the 2015 winner and 2020 judge of the UK’s National Flash Fiction Day microfiction competition.
