Edge Hill Prize 2020 Longlist
Lisa Blower’s debut collection of short stories, It’s Gone Dark Over Bill’s Mother’s, and Elleke Boehmer’s To the Volcano have both leapt on to the 2020 Edge Hill Short Story Prize longlist – the only UK-based award to recognise excellence in a single-authored short story collection. The first ever all-female longlist features just twelve collections and represents an exciting range of new writing from UK and Irish writers. It will be narrowed down to a shortlist in September, with the winner announced in November.
Congratulations to both Elleke and Lisa!
Books That Matter: Books and Treats Package 2020
Sold out in 30 minutes! Thank you to everyone who bought the latest Books That Matter gift box, which included To The Volcano by Elleke Boehmer and Cora Vincent by Georgina Aboud, along with treats from Bird and Blend, Kookie Cat Cookies and Candy Kittens. Did you manage to order your box in time?
Thank you to Lizzy Dening, Clare Burgess, Simply Steph 101, Siobhan Kangataran, Amy Parsnips and Holly & her Hardbacks on Instagram for featuring the box – we hope you’re now firm fans of both books and look forward to hearing your reviews.
Tales of the amazing light show of life, Sunday Times South Africa
‘DH Lawrence talked about the “unspeakable beauty” of this light over the sea in Sydney. Katherine Mansfield admired its silver sheen on the waves in Wellington harbour. Many of us have watched it shimmer across the Karoo, as does the ex-combatant character in my story “Blue Eyes”. Some, like the group of people in the title story “To the Volcano” are so drenched in it they fall crazily in love. Or see their love in a completely new and shocking light, as in “The Biographer and the Wife”.
All of the characters in To the Volcano took on a distinct and definite shape as if standing under this light, bathed in it, even the titular “Evelina”, who (to confess) I first borrowed from James Joyce but then gave a home in Buenos Aires.
And this is not even to begin to speak of the light that is southern starlight, which simply is brighter than the starlight of the northern hemisphere. Fact. The South Pole is oriented to the centre of our galaxy, the Milky Way, and some of the stars like Alpha Centauri are also actually closer by.’
Elleke Boehmer writes for Sunday Times South Africa about short story collection To The Volcano.
Confronting fractured worlds in Elleke Boehmer's To The Volcano, TLS
In “South, North”, the second story in Elleke Boehmer’s new collection, Lise, a young Australian woman, visits Paris after learning French. She has a backpack full of classic books, including Émile Zola’s L’Assommoir, and a map borrowed from her French teacher. She wakes early in her hostel, eats an apple and goes out looking for the Goutte d’Or, the setting for Zola’s novel. On the way she eats a madeleine from a packet bought in a métro kiosk. It “tastes of almost nothing”.
Anjali Joseph dissects To The Volcano and other stories by Elleke Boehmer for Times Literary Supplement.
Elleke Boehmer interview with Deborah Kalb
What additional themes do you see running through the collection?
Elleke: ‘As well as the themes of remoteness and encounter across distance I’ve already mentioned, and also of places and people eluding our expectations, a thread that runs throughout, perhaps it runs through much of my work, is the idea that the prizes we most fervently seek might be closer to home than we imagine: that thing about arriving where we began and knowing the place for the very first time…’
Deborah Kalb interviews Elleke Boehmer, author of To The Volcano and other stories. Read in full HERE.
Eithne Farry on short stories, Daily Mail
‘The characters in these beautifully crafted stories often find themselves out on a limb, heading into or out of situations that make them feel isolated or alone.’
Eithne Farry includes the atmospheric To The Volcano by Elleke Boehmer in a review of short story collections for the Daily Mail. Read the article in full HERE.
Winner of the Olive Schreiner Prize for Prose and Shortlisted for the Elizabeth Jolley Short Story Prize
Author Elleke Boehmer has won the Olive Schreiner Prize for Prose, for her novel Shouting in the Dark. She has also been shortlisted for the Elizabeth Jolley Prize for her short story Supermarket Love, which features in To The Volcano (published by Myriad in October 2019).
Myriad authors awarded at the Royal Society of Literature summer party
The Royal Society of Literature elected 45 new Fellows and Honorary Fellows last week at the annual RSL summer party.
New Daughters of Africa contributors Catherine Johnson and Dorothea Smartt were elected as Fellows alongside To The Volcano author Elleke Boehmer, while New Daughters of Africa contributor Ellah Wakatama Allfrey and Brave New Words editor Susheila Nasta were elected as Honorary Fellows.
Susheila was also awarded the prestigious Benson Medal, for exceptional contributions to the advancement of literature.
Click HERE to read The Bookseller’s write up of the event.