by Editor
on February 14, 2016
SECOND HONORABLE MENTION
The 2016 Screw Turn Flash Fiction Competition
By STUART RIDING
You find yourself in a wood surrounded by bracken and undergrowth, the moonlight dappled between leafless branches. You are thereby mildly inconvenienced – pausing for a moment – but you soon untangle yourself and start moving. Moving on all fours.
On all four paws.
Fast. You are fleet-footed.
You pause again to look down at your fur . . . dirty dark-auburn moonlit brown. You look back around at your off-white tail.
You think: Fox.
Again! Yes. We are going for a little walk, you think. Escaping a dim memory of vague, intangible threat you take yourself down to the beach. The moon’s still out. It is low tide. [continue reading…]
by Editor
on February 1, 2016
An Illustration For Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream Painted In 1793-1794 By Swiss Artist Johann Heinrich Füssli
One Contest Closes, Another Opens!
The Screw Turn Flash Fiction Competition for short-short stories on a supernatural theme is now closed to submissions. Thanks to everyone who sent us a story—you’ll be hearing from us soon. The winner and honorable mentions will be announced and published on February 14.
Meanwhile, The Ghost Story Supernatural Fiction Award contest for full-length short stories that incorporate an uncanny element is scheduled to open on February 15, with cash prizes of $1,000 for the winning story, $250 for the first Honorable Mention, and $100 for the Second Honorable mention—plus publication on TGS.
This will be the third time we’ve run The Ghost Story Supernatural Fiction Award. Our previous winners are available for your reading enjoyment. May they provide you with some inspiration—and a pleasurable shudder!
by Editor
on November 23, 2015
A Literary Ghost Story
William Gay’s Haunted Novel: A Ghost Story Review
William Gay’s posthumous novel, Little Sister Death (Dzanc Books; 202 pages), was published to modest fanfare on October 31. It is, in our opinion, the best kind of ghost story: one written by a novelist who views writing as an art rather than merely as a way of throwing a cheap scare into his reader.
Gay, if you’re unfamiliar with him, was a Tennesseean who achieved literary success relatively late in life when his first novel, The Long Home, won the 1999 James A. Michener Memorial Prize. He was far into his fifties and up to then had worked at construction, factory work, house painting, and a variety of other blue-collar jobs, and had published his first two short stories only a year before. His other books include the novels Provinces of Night and Twilight, along with the short-story collections I Hate To See That Evening Sun Go Down and Wittgenstein’s Lolita. He died in 2012.
Gay’s often-violent fiction is deeply rooted in the Southern Gothic tradition, and in his style one hears strong echoes of Cormac McCarthy, who was a personal friend and mentor. William Faulkner and Flannery O’Connor are other obvious influences.
Apparently, Gay also was a believer in ghosts. [continue reading…]
by Editor
on October 31, 2015
Jaroslav Panuška, 1900
It’s Finally Halloween—And Time To Publish The Top Stories In The Ghost Story Supernatural Fiction Award Contest. Happy Reading!
Stories poured in from the U.S., Canada, and the United Kingdom. The winning pieces—one that’s at once bittersweet and spooky, three others that are entirely unnerving—are set in wartime Japan, in rural Scotland, in suburban America, and in the dark hill country of the American South.
And the winning writers are as varied as their work: A well-known author who has won many prestigious awards, a 29-year-old from the West Coast who never previously published a word and is now publishing two stories here, and an Australian native now living in, and inspired by, Scotland.
Come on in and have a read—but be warned: Afterward, you may feel like sleeping with the lights on for a while.
