News and Features

ABCtales At York

Posted by Luke Neima on Mon, 03 Feb 2014

This past Saturday ABCtales took The Black Swan in York by storm. It was a night to remember: we had a huge turnout and a suite of incredible readings that ran the gamut from daff-picking to Italian cooking, African vacations to dopplegangers, social workers to microwave ovens. The stories and poems were stunning, punctuated by a ukulele serenade from Miss Jacqui Wicks and a digital cameo from HudsonMoon - who made an appearance all the way from...

31.01.14 Story, Poem and Inspiration Point of the Week

Posted by Luke Neima on Fri, 31 Jan 2014

Tomorrow is ABCtales’ get-together in the North – we’ll be meeting at The Black Swan in York from 18:30 – and it promises to be an incredible time. If you haven’t planned your Saturday yet, book a ticket, borrow a car, get your nan to give you a lift: do what you need to do to be there! Among the readers will be VeraClark, whose ‘Tissue Atlas’ is our Story of the Week. This piece is a remarkable biography told in the style of a human atlas. The...

ABCtales Get-together in York this Saturday

Posted by Luke Neima on Tue, 28 Jan 2014

ABCtales is hosting a get-together in the north this weekend! On Saturday , 1st February 2014, we will be meeting at The Black Swan in York (23 Peasholme Green, YO1 7PR). There will be readings beginning at 18:30 and on until 20:30, but the conversation and catch-up will no doubt go on for much longer. This is the perfect opportunity to hear a live performance from a very talented roster of ABC's authors. But on top of our usual reading model we...

24.01.14 Story, Poem and Inspiration Point of the Week

Posted by Luke Neima on Fri, 24 Jan 2014

Our story of the week comes from In The Day , the utterly incredible novel from Kevin Marman, a.k.a Stan, which is now available from Longmarsh Press and soon from Waterstones and independent booksellers around the UK. If you’re interested, find out how to get a copy and read a full review of the book, here: http://www.abctales.com/blog/luke-neima/stan%E2%80%99s-novel-%E2%80%93-d... . But if you’re not convinced, have a read of ‘Thursday’, our...

Stan’s Novel – In the Day – Is Now Available

Posted by Luke Neima on Thu, 23 Jan 2014

I’ve been meaning to write about In the Day for a while now. When Stan (Kevin Marman) first sent me his novel in December, I thought I’d read it quickly over the holidays and put something up by the end of the month. But I wasn’t quite prepared for what the book actually is. And what it is, is excellent. In every respect. And like any other excellent novel In the Day is one you have to read slowly – because there’s so much you need to pause and...

17.01.14 Story, Poem and Inspiration Point of the Week

Posted by Luke Neima on Fri, 17 Jan 2014

It’s been an exciting week here at ABC – we’ve had two big announcements, our Picks of the Year from 2013 (which you can read more about here: http://www.abctales.com/blog/luke-neima/picks-year-2013 ) as well as the results from our Winter competition (which you can find, along with honourable mentions, here: http://www.abctales.com/blog/luke-neima/results-abc%E2%80%99s-winter-competition ). All of which makes for some excellent reading (for...

The Results of ABC’s Winter Competition

Posted by Luke Neima on Thu, 16 Jan 2014

The results are in! But first a big thanks to all of you who participated. We had a great turnout, with forty submissions, and we managed to raise almost £200 – which means two cash prizes of £50 to each of our winners. But the competition was very fierce. In our reading we saw every aspect of Winterness adapted, remembered, parodied, pastiched and perfected, which made for fascinating few weeks of reading and some very difficult judging. But...

Picks of the Year 2013

Posted by Luke Neima on Tue, 14 Jan 2014

Tony and I have spent the past few weeks reading and rereading the best content from 2013 — trawling through the awards and the pieces we had squirreled away on folders on our desktop. It’s been a fabulous year in more ways than one, but the thing that is most astonishing to me, as a new member of the ABC community, is the quantity of truly excellent work on the site. Over and over again I’ve come across poems that have stopped me in my tracks,...

10.1.14 Story, Poem and Inspiration Point of the Week

Posted by Luke Neima on Fri, 10 Jan 2014

Hi all, Tony and I have been hard at work reading competition entries this week (as well as whittling down a shortlist for Picks of the Year, 2013), so look forward to a few big announcements very soon. And though so much time and talent went into writing for the competition, there were still plenty of fantastic pieces on the site this week. One of those is our poem of the week, Hoalarg's Night Piece, a simple, evocative poem that captures that...

Entry to ABC's Winter Competition Closes on Monday!

Posted by Luke Neima on Fri, 03 Jan 2014

This is the final call for submissions to our Winter competition! All entries must be in by midnight Greenwich Mean Time on this coming Monday, January the sixth. So if you’ve registered but haven’t submitted your story yet, get writing , and if you haven’t registered, sign up via Paypal below! Rules: The theme of the competition is loosely based around ‘Winter,’ but feel free to incorporate the theme as much or as little as you’d like. This is...

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