I picked 3 short fictions for Banshee magazine, all of them challenging, interesting pieces. Lots of other good picks on the list to investigate.

I wrote about Ai Wei Wei’s memoir for Literary Review. Inexplicably, the review makes no mention of this incident:

My second novel will be out from Swift Press next year – you can pre-order here.

I have a story in the new issue of Banshee about the joys of tenement living. You can preorder here.

My piece on Orville Schell’s novel is in the latest TLS.

I wrote about Moscow’s Stalinist skyscrapers for the Financial Times.

Thanks to Aleksandra Kos for an interesting piece which argues that the book explores ‘the experience of embodiment and how this shapes social relations’.

I have a new story on the Short Fiction website about being scared to go outside on a hot day. So not topical at all.

I wrote about the delights of literary ‘success’ for the Royal Literary Fund.

My story, as titled above, is the story of the month at the Willesden Herald. It’s from my first story collection The False River.

I had a very enjoyable conversation with John Siddique about China and writing for the Royal Literary Fund. You can listen here or download as a podcast.

I went on Swedish radio to talk about Xinjiang and other small questions like the future of China. Listen here

Thanks to Creative Scotland for awarding me a grant to work on my next novel, which if you squint at, or close one eye, you could call a love story.

There’s a review of The False River in The Herald newspaper today.

‘The False River

Nick Holdstock

Unthank, £9.99

The Willesden Herald Short Story Prize might not sound glitzy, but it allows Nick Holdstock’s story “Ward” (in which a teenage girl’s cancer diagnosis changes the course of her life) to be described as award-winning, which feels deserved. And judging by the quality of these stories, it won’t be his last accolade. Short story collections are often front-loaded with the best work, but The False River actually becomes more compelling as it goes along. His ease with dark and transgressive themes (animal-lovers should skip past “The Ballad of Poor Lucy Miller”) brings to mind a young Ian McEwan, but Holdstock is a multi-faceted writer who often seems to be urging his stories to break free of the frames surrounding them and even alters one character mid-story because he doesn’t like the direction it’s going. But mostly this accomplished collection is driven by a burning curiosity about the psychological states of its characters, and it should put him firmly on the literary map.

The start of ‘And Then’, a story from The False River, appears in today’s Scotsman newspaper.

The False River is out now.

With thanks to the publications in which some of this work first appeared – especially the Manchester Review, the Southern Review, and the Willesden Herald. I’m also grateful to editors like Emily Nemens (formerly of the Southern Review, now Paris Review Fiction Editor), Tom Vowler, and especially the late Jeanne Leiby, who was my first editor at the Southern Review, and offered me encouragement at a crucial time.

Thanks to Tom Vowler for a fun interview now posted on the Unthank Blog. Glad to say peacocks get a mention.

Out September 26th. Pre-order here.

Arthur Quiller-Couch

I wrote about editing for the Royal Literary Fund website.