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The
Society for the Study of the Short Story has elected
Lisbon for the venue of its 9th International Conference
on the Short Story in English to be held in June, 2006.
About the Society
The Society for the Study of the Short Story was
chartered in 1994, following a first gathering of people
interested in the writing and study of short stories which took
place at the Sorbonne in 1989. Later conferences were held in
1996 (Cedar Falls and Iowa City, Iowa) and in 1998 (New Orleans,
Louisiana). In 2000, the conference returned to Iowa City, and
was jointly sponsored by the renowned Iowa Writers' Workshop.
The 2002 conference was held in New Orleans, and the 2004
conference took place in Alcalá de Henares (Spain), returning to
Europe for the first time since 1989.
Current board members are Clark Blaise (President), Bharati
Mukherjee, Maurice A. Lee, Allan Weiss, Claire Larriere, Velma
Pollard, and Juani Guerra.
If you would like to
become a member of the Society for the Study of the Short Story,
please visit:
http://www.shortstorysociety.com/
About the
Conference
Every other year the International Conference on the Short
Story in English brings together writers and scholars with
an interest in the short story, creating an unusual forum for a
fruitful debate between the practitioners of the art and
critical readers, coming from a diversity of fields and sharing
a variety of interests.
Writers and readers, bound by their common love for the short
story, convene from all over the world. They are interested in
exploring the ways and byways of an art that interconnects with
other forms of literature as well as with other fields of art (namely
photography, painting, cinema, music, and others). They also
approach and discuss the variety of ways in which the short
story is (and has been) embodied in history and geography,
exploring the multiple interweaving links of production and
consumption of literary works with the social, political,
economic, and other issues relevant to a given time and place.
Attendees have come from Africa, Asia, Europe, North and South
America, and the Caribbean. Countries represented include
Argentina, Austria, Australia, Bangladesh, Belgium, Canada, the
Canary Islands, England, Ethiopia, France, Guyana, India,
Jamaica, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Poland, Portugal, Spain,
Sri Lanka, Trinidad, and the United States.
About the Topic – Views from the Edge: the Short Story
Revisited
Portugal, and particularly Lisbon, situated at the edge of a
vast territorial mass overlooking the Ocean (the westernmost
point of continental Europe is just around the corner from
Lisbon), has offered over time a privileged standpoint from
which to reflect upon matters of cultural spatiality, the
cartographing of the world (the physical or the imaginary one),
and the implications of being at the edge, culturally and
otherwise. As a metaphor, the edge also finds compelling
resonance both with short story writers, intent on pushing the
art of storytelling to the very edge of fiction, and with short
story readers, challenged by new and unconventional ways of
storytelling.
About the
Venue and Local Organization
The English Department of the Faculty of Letters, University
of Lisbon, and the University of Lisbon Centre for English
Studies (ULICES), a research unit sponsored by the Foundation
for Science and Technology (FCT), will organize the 9th
International Conference on the Short Story in English
in 2006.
Conference permanent Director: Maurice A Lee, University of
Central Arkansas
Local Directors: Teresa F. A. Alves and Teresa Cid
Organizing Committee: Alexandra Assis Rosa, Diana Almeida,
Eduarda Melo Cabrita, Isabel Mealha, Luísa Falcão, Luísa Maria
Flora, Margarida Vale de Gato, Rita Queiroz
de Barros, Rute Beirante.
Secretariat: Cláudia Pinto, Odília Gaspar.
About the
Program
This conference will bring together renowned writers of fiction
in English – British, American, Canadian, Australian, Caribbean,
South-African, Indian, etc. – with writers who have had (or will
have for this event) their work translated into English, above
all Portuguese writers, who will join in reading sessions,
roundtable discussions and panels, and translation workshops.
The 9th International Conference on the Short Story in English
will also host a number of sessions, both in the more
traditional format (with presentation of papers) and in other
formats involving performance, dance, etc., having in mind that
the form of the short story is not necessarily confined to the
limits of the written page but may open up to manifold fields of
expression.
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