SSS organiser, John Holland writes -
A record-smashing 91 Glos/South Glos authors submitted a total of 128 stories for our April event. A heartfelt thank you to all those authors. The very high quality of the writing made my decisions very difficult indeed - certainly the most difficult of any SSS event I have organised. Eventually, I made a long list of over 40 stories, all of which worked really well, and then narrowed it to 25, which were, in my view, of a standard that meant they could well have been selected for previous SSS events. It was sad not to be able to select more than ten.
These are the stories and authors chosen - in the running order for the evening.
Le Fromager - Martin Spice (Nailsworth)
Cows Can't Jump - Philip Bowne (Cheltenham)
The Alchemy of Chocolate - Debbie Young (Hawkesbury Upton, South Glos.)
Ways of Seeing - Richard Vick (Stroud)
Daffodils - Katherine Mitchell (Brimscombe, Stroud)
The Sweetest Smile - Rod Griffiths (Cheltenham)
The Giant meets the Christ-child - Anthony Hentschel (Nailsworth)
The Casablanca - James Sinkinson (Wotton-under-Edge)
The Bronze Garden - Chloe Turner (Wotton-under-Edge)
The Spinsters - Mary Omnes (Stroud)
It is inevitable, in the end, that the choices made were personal ones, but I love these stories, and hope that you will too. Huge congratulations to the authors. I have no doubt that they will provide a most stimulating evening's entertainment.
Tickets are only available online in advance from the SVA/Site Festival website. This is because we had to turn people away at the door last time.
Please be warned - from my personal experience of buying a ticket, it is emailed to you but may well go to your Spam inbox, so please check! Be warned too that we will sell out.
Anthology - Only a few copies of the first Stroud Short Stories Anthology 2011-2015 will be available at the 19 April event. Instead there will be a launch/get-together at The Ale House in John Street on Friday 8 May from 7pm onwards. Pre-ordered copies must be collected then and not at the 19 April event.
