17th International Conference on the Short Story in English

17 - 21 June, 2025

Workshops

On Tuesday 17 June, 2025, the day before the conference starts, there will be workshops. Please check below for further information about each Workshop. We look forward to welcoming you to the 17th International Conference on the Short Story in English.

To register for the conference and a workshop please click here

Workshops

Tuesday 17 June, 2025, 10:00 – 13:00

Rebekah Clarkson - Finding the gaps: Giving and Receiving feedback on short stories

Katharine Crawford Robey - How to Write a Picture Book for Children: A Workshop

Marjorie Kanter - Creativity Workshop: Notice/Attention, Accurate Recording and Playfulness

Robin Hemley - Writing the Autobiographical short story

Robin McLean - Bridging the Divide: Exploring Dangerous Writing

Vanessa Gebbie - Grist to the Mill


Tuesday 17 June, 2025, 14:00-17:00

Robert Olen Butler - The Essence and the Practice: a Theory and a Coached Story

Evelyn Conlon - After the Start

Xu Xi - Identifying Elephants

Michael Mirolla - How to Maximize your Chances of Publishing a Short Story Collection 

Billie Travalini - Writing like a Reader: how to give readers what they want

Paul McVeigh - The Art of the Powerful Short Story Narrative


Please find further information on the available Workshops and their Leaders below


Finding the gaps: Giving and Receiving feedback on short stories 

By virtue of their brevity, it is quick and easy to provide a writer with great feedback on a short story, right?

Wrong… (And we’ve all lived through a horror to know it.) But at some point in the writing process, we need and want to receive feedback on our short stories. This workshop will help you better understand your own creative process as a short story writer, how and when to find appropriate feedback and how to hear it in a way that empowers you to serve the story you’ve written. We’ll also consider whether a writing group is a good idea. We’ll then learn strategies for giving astute and sensitive feedback on the stories of others and particularly, how to shed light on missed narrative opportunities peculiar to the short form – those elusive and wondrous ‘gaps’ that have the capacity to create whole worlds. This workshop will be particularly useful for new and emerging writers. It is designed to be empowering, illuminating and skill-building: no scary feedback sessions here.

Rebekah Clarkson

Rebekah Clarkson is the author of Barking Dogs (Affirm Press), a short story cycle set in Mount Barker, South Australia where the author lives. Her stories have been recognised in major awards in Australia and overseas, including the ABR Elizabeth Jolley Short Story Prize, Fish Publishing Short Story Prize and Glimmer Train’s Fiction Open. Her short stories have appeared in publications including Griffith Review, Best Australian Stories and Something Special, Something Rare: Outstanding Short Stories by Australian Women (Black Inc.). She has a BA in Aboriginal Studies and an MA and PhD in Creative Writing from the University of Adelaide, where she works as the Coordinator of Writing Support Programs. She has taught fiction writing at a number of Australian Universities and at the University of Texas at Austin. Rebekah is a Board Member of the Society for the Study of the Short Story.

How to Write a Picture Book for Children: A Workshop 

Who doesn’t want to write a picture book? It’s simple, right? But this genre can be tricky, at best. A picture book is shorter than most short, short stories, usually under 1000 words.

In this hands-on workshop Katharine will help you learn how to get to the essence of your story quickly, as well as how the interplay between text and illustrations work.  What the author needs to understand is that a Picture Book is also a Story Book, and thus the two aspects of those skills need to come together in order for the book to work, for it to relate to children.

Katharine Crawford Robey is the author of four picture books and numerous short stories for children. Come with an idea and she’ll help you develop it into a traditional picture book.

Katharine Crawford Robey

Katharine loves to write for children because she believes that early reading is the pathway to success in life. Katharine was first published in “Cricket” magazine in 1992. That story, “Fireworks!” set in Frankfort, Michigan, USA, was reprinted in Milkweed Edition’s anthology, “The Great Lakes: A Literary Field Guide.” “Fireworks!” has been read by over 300,000 young students on standardized tests.

“Fireworks!” and Katharine’s other short stories (likewise anthologized or published in literary magazines) can be found in her book, “Cardinal Coat: A Collection for Everyone.” Katharine has published four picture books to date, with more on the way. “Hare and the Big Green Lawn” (illustrated by Larry MacDougall; Rising Moon 2006) is about a rabbit who moves from the country to the suburbs and decides to turn his big green lawn into a meadow. ”Where’s the Party?” (illustrated by Kate Endle; Charlesbridge, 2011) is about Kate who finds a party for ducklings by listening for clues the birds give her. “Where’s the Party?” is also available as an ebook, complete with audio birdsongs. “The Sleeping Bear Wakes Up” (Illustrated by Julie Copiz; Mission Point Press, 2019) is a sequel to the Native American legend “The Sleeping Bear.” “Tor & Raven Are Friends” (Co-Author Tracy Mikowski; Mission Point Press, 2022) is about an unlikely friendship between a large white dog and a raven. The story was inspired by the real friendship of the two characters. Katharine also writes short stories and plays for adults. She is seeking the production of her latest play, “First Harvest.” Katharine is currently working on a new picture book, “Little Rabbit and the Moon;” and a screen play about John and Lucy Audubon, “Sky Dance. Katharine teaches creative writing to children in summers in Empire, Michigan. The remainder of the year, she leads a workshop for adults in her hometown, Atlanta, Georgia. Her hobbies include birdwatching and playing the violin. Katharine and her husband, Ron, have two grown married children and four grandchildren. Included in the Robey family is their mischievous standard poodle, Willa Cather Robey, who devours literature literally!

Creativity Workshop: Notice/Attention, Accurate Recording and Playfulness

This workshop is interactive and process oriented. It has as its goal, the opening of doors to and enhancing your creative energies. Multiple short activities and exercises bring about exploration and understanding of self, context, relationship...etc. You will participate in the presentation and working through of multiple short activities and exercises to facilitate this opening of doors to your creative mind.  We will look at things from diverse points of view. You will dig into your sub-conscious, work to catch floating (and often previously unnoticed) thoughts, expand your thinking and use language to express that thinking. We will turn things upside down and inside out, pay attention to oneself and what is around one's self, hear and see different points of view, capture and record accurately and then engage in playfulness to transform collected data into creative writing pieces.  The workshop will include the cycling and weaving through of activities focused on the following:
1. Notice and attention.
2. Data gathering and accurate recording.
3. Playfulness. Time frame: 3 hours

Marjorie Kanter

Marjorie Kanter is the author of two books of short literary poem-like pieces and a third, a bilingual book, all based on life experience: I Displace the Air as I Walk,  and Small Talk, and  Field Notes/Notas de Campo, and the projects: 'The Saddle Stitch Notebooks', 'The Bagged Stories', Im/politeness: 100 days on Twitter for the London Word Festival, Mirror Mirror: A Performative Conversation with Yourself,  'Talking Cultures' in process, and a series of word/art installations for La Fundación Caixa, Lleida amongst other things.  She has given creativity writing workshops in the USA, Spain, Morocco and Germany. Kanter is particularly interested in the pragmatics of communication, ethnography and the use of writing for thinking, relation making, understanding, training and problem resolution...You will find samples of her work, a more detailed CV, and other things on her web: www.marjoriekanter.com

Writing the Autobiographical short story

What distinguishes the autobiographical short story from memoir, if anything? In this short course, we will examine the sometimes thin lines between memoir and fiction in the short story, using examples form modern literature (including short stories in which writers neglected to change the names of real people upon whom they were basing their characters). We will cover the uses of anecdote in writing stories as well as the transformation process from autobiography to fiction.  We will also discuss the Asian four-part narrative structure, Kishotenketsu and how this form works well with autobiographical material. Be prepared to write an exercise or two as well. 

Robin Hemley

Robin Hemley has published fifteen books of fiction and nonfiction. His most recent books are the autofiction, Oblivion, An After-Autobiography (Gold Wake, 2022), The Art and Craft of Asian Stories: A Writer’s Guide and Anthology, co-authored with Xu Xi (Bloomsbury, 2021) and Borderline Citizen: Dispatches from the Outskirts of Nationhood (Nebraska, 2020, Penguin SE Asia, 2021).  He has previously published four collections of short stories, and his stories have been widely anthologized. His widely used writing text, Turning Life into Fiction, has sold over a hundred thousand copies and has been in print for nearly thirty years.  His work has been published and translated widely and he has received such awards as a Guggenheim Fellowship, a fellowship from the Rockefeller Foundation, three Pushcart Prizes in both nonfiction and fiction, The Nelson Algren Award for Fiction, The Independent Press Book Award for Memoir, among others. His short stories have been featured several times on NPR’s “Selected Shorts” and his essays and short stories have appeared in such journals as Creative Nonfiction, Conjunctions, Guernica, The Iowa Review, The New York Times, New York Magazine, Chicago Tribune, and many others.  He is the Founder of the international nonfiction conference, NonfictioNOW and was the director of the Nonfiction Writing Program at The University of Iowa for nine years, inaugural director of The Writers’ Centre at Yale-NUS, Singapore, and is a graduate of The Iowa Writers’ Workshop. He is co-editor with Leila Philip of Speculative Nonfiction (Specualtivenonfiction.org) and co-founder of Authors at Large with Xu Xi (aalauthors.com).  His websites are Robinhemley.com and Oblvion.cafe. His forthcoming collection of essays is How to Change History: A Salvage Project  (Nebraska, 2025).  Subscribe to his Substack at Robinhemley.substack.com

Bridging the Divide: Exploring Dangerous Writing

A craft-based creative writing workshop for all genres and levels.

There are the things we write, and the things we want to write, and the divide between. We know when we have reached the divide when we stop typing at a precipice, when pens are set down, when we say, “No, I can’t write that.” Or worst of all, hitting the delete button! In this generative class, we’ll build a bridge over the “divide.” Using a variety of guided, craft-based creative writing experiments and prompts, we’ll cross over to the other side into “dangerous” ways of writing. We’ll explore some dangerous writings of Terrance Hayes, Pamela Painter and Han Kang. Whether personally prohibited content, or style, we’ll find methods of exploring through technique. Participants will depart the class with newly opened writing landscapes, more freedom of movement in their work, and liberty to travel on new and necessary maps. This session is open to writers of all genres and levels.  

Robin McLean

Robin McLean worked as a lawyer and then a potter in the woods of Alaska before turning to writing. Her first story collection Reptile House won the BOA Editions Fiction Prize and was noted as a best book of 2015 in Paris Review. Her debut novel Pity the Beast was noted as a best book of fiction of 2021 in The Guardian and Wall Street Journal, and long-listed for the Reading the West Prize.  Her second story collection, Get'em Young, Treat'em Tough, Tell'em Nothing was an Editors' Choice 

 in the NYTimes, and was longlisted for the Republic of Consciousness Prize. 

She is currently the 2023 Visiting Writer in the MFA program at the University of Montana. When not wandering the American Mountain West, she's found in Canada on the edge of the Salish Sea.

Grist to the Mill

This workshop is be based on my  “Grist to the Mill” online creative events, which are aimed both at writers seeking as many different exercises and games to open up new characters, new settings, voices and story ideas, and at teachers who seek to bring new inspirations to their students. A balance to the necessary academic disciplines, my specialism is reminding writers both old and new of the power of our imaginations when set free. The participants will engage in the given tasks, and will also write a lot. The book, 51 and a Half Games and Ideas for Writers, with Example Responses will be utilized in the workshop for both exercises and examples.

Vanessa Gebbie

Vanessa Gebbie is an experienced creative writing teacher, facilitator and mentor and is contributing editor of Short Circuit: Guide to the Art of the Short Story (Salt Publishing, editions i and ii). Her writing has been used in iGCSE papers, has been commissioned by BBC Radio, for anthologies, and is translated into several languages. She has been invited to tutor for the Arvon Foundation, New Writing South, Spread the Word, The Word Factory, Gladstone’s Library and literary events and festivals in the UK and abroad, schools and colleges. She is author of a constantly growing number of diverse books including one novel, five collections of short form fictions, two poetry collections and two guidebooks for writers. Her novel, The Coward’s Tale (Bloomsbury) was a Financial Times Novel of the Year. Her latest fiction publication is a translation into German of her illustrated novella in flash, Ed’s Wife and Other Creatures. Her latest guidebook for writers is 51 and a half Games and Ideas for Writers (Ad Hoc Books, 2023) Her creative work has been supported by the Arts Council, by residencies at Gladstone’s Library in the UK and Anam Cara Writers and Artists’ Retreat in Ireland, and by a Hawthornden Fellowship. vanessagebbie.com

The Essence and the Practice: a Theory and a Coached Story

The workshop will have two parts. One will focus on the fundamentals of the creative process for any fiction writers, beginning or advanced, who aspire to create enduring literature.  We will address such issues as what is art and what is distinctive about the way the artist addresses the world, the inner self, and the objects to be created. The second part will be a carefully constructed, orally coached, in-class writing session that will help attendees instantly exercise the parts of their artistic self identified in the first part and that could potentially yield a viable short story. Absolutely essential: Bring to the workshop an appropriate mode of story-writing that you are comfortable using, anything ranging from portable computer to paper and pencil.

Robert Olen Butler

Robert Olen Butler has written nineteen novels and six volumes of short stories, one of which, A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain, won the 1993 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. He has twice won a National Magazine Award in Fiction and has appeared four times in The Best American Short Stories and eight times in New Stories from the South. He was also the seventeenth recipient of the F. Scott Fitzgerald Award for Outstanding Achievement in American Literature. His works have been translated into twenty-one languages. His latest novel, Twice Around a Marriage, is soon forthcoming from TCU Press. Butler teaches creative writing at Florida State University and lives in Capps, Florida.

After the Start

In this workshop, we will hope to help the writers enter into negotiations with all their senses, as they throw themselves into stories. In other words, we will look at what happens “after the boots have been put on,” as the writer, who has begun the first steps, seeks to continue walking with confidence. I would like participants to leave knowing why they are creating the particular work they’re engaged in and how to finish it. Each participant should have a story, or even just the start of a story that they want assistance with. They do not have to submit the work to me prior to the workshop, but they should have the work with them at the workshop.

Evelyn Conlon

Biography: Evelyn Conlon short story writer, novelist and essayist is widely translated, most recently into Tamil, Chinese and Greek. She is the editor/co-editor of four anthologies including Cutting the Night in Two and Later On.  She has been writer-in-residence in many places at home and internationally, and is Adjunct Professor with Carlow University, Pittsburgh, MFA.  Her last short story collection, Moving About the Place, 2021, was followed by Reading Rites: Books, writing and other things that matter, 2023, a collection of essays on the life. Telling Truths, a collection on her work, was edited by Teresa Caneda-Cabrera, published by Peter Lang, 2023.

More details on www.evelynconlon.com

Identifying Elephants

A generative writing workshop led by XU XI 許素細 xuxiwriter.com

In this generative writing workshop, Xu will address the question of why we choose what we write about in our fiction.  She will lead you through a series of writing exercises to help identify the “elephant in the room” of who you are, often the thing you want to avoid that, if turned into fiction, may prove to be the most important work you need to write.  The goal of this workshop is to transform your most daunting elephant into a piece of fiction you can take away with you for further development.

Xu Xi

xuxiwriter.com is an Indonesian-Chinese writer from Hong Kong.  Her sixteen books include five novels, nine collections of fiction/essays, one memoir, one co-authored textbook, and has also edited four anthologies of English Hong Kong literature.  Recent titles are Monkey in Residence and Other Speculations (Signal 8 UK, 2022), This Fish is Fowl: Essays of Being (Nebraska 2019), Dear Hong Kong: An Elegy for a City (Penguin, 2017), the novel That Man in Our Lives (C&R, 2016), and The Art and Craft of Asian Stories (Bloomsbury, 2021).  Recent critical publications include “The Problem of English in Contemporary Literature,” 2023 Nobel Symposium on Literature papers (Nobel Institute, 2024) and “In Pursuit of the Writer’s Life (despite the Academy)” The Scholarship of Creative Writing Practice: Beyond Craft, Pedagogy and the Academy, ed. Meekings/Moore (Bloomsbury 2024). She was writer-in-residence at Arizona State University, the City University of Hong Kong, and the University of Iowa, and directed two international MFAs in creative writing and literary translation.  Earlier, she held management positions at the Asian Wall Street Journal, Federal Express, Pinkerton’s.  Co-founder of Authors at Large, she is currently the William H.P. Jenks Chair in Contemporary Letters, College of the Holy Cross.  She holds a MFA in fiction from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst  (1985) and was awarded an honorary doctorate (DFA) from the State University of New York in 2024.  A diehard transnational and former Indonesian national, she is now a U.S. citizen. 

How to Maximize your Chances of Publishing a Short Story Collection 

Personal experiences by someone who combines publishing, editing and writing. From putting together the best collection possible to creating can’t-miss tag lines, synopses, query letters, audience targeting and marketing plans. Historical examples followed by one-on-one tutoring of workshop attendee presentations. This workshop will provide 1. Hands-on information and one-to-one dialogue for short story writers at all levels of their development. The approach will depend on the make-up of the attendees. 2. Specific information on what makes a good short story collection. 3. Information on publishers who are favorable towards publishing short story collections and the types of collections they favor. 4. Information on how to create/fine tune successful tag lines, synopses, query letters for publishers/agents, and marketing plans — with examples followed by one-on-one with attendees. Mirolla will help writers develop the ability to explain during the workshop the level they’re at (how close they feel they are to having a collection ready), and the types of short stories they write. Writers will be invited to bring in their tag lines, synopses, query letters and marketing plans so that they can be discussed and dissected in the workshop.

Michael Mirolla

The author of a clutch of published novels, plays, film scripts and short story and poetry collections, MICHAEL MIROLLA’s publications include a novella, The Last News Vendor, winner of the 2020 Hamilton Literary Award, as well as three Bressani Prizes: the novel Berlin; the poetry collection The House on 14th Avenue; and the short story collection Lessons in Relationship Dyads. His latest poetry collection, At the End of the World, was short-listed for the 2022 Hamilton Literary Award and took second prize for the Di Cicco Poetry Award. His latest short story collection Becker’s World & Other Stories was published in the spring of 2024 (Black Moss Press). In the fall of 2019, Michael served a three-month writer’s residency at the Historic Joy Kogawa House in Vancouver where he worked on the first draft of a novel, The Second Law of Thermodynamics. A symposium on Michael’s writing was held in Toronto on May 25, 2023. In September of 2023, Michael took part in a writers’ residency in Olot, Catalonia. While there, he polished a novella, How About This …?, which is scheduled for publication in September 2025 (At Bay Press). In July 2024, Michael participated in a month-long writers’ residency in Barcelona. Apart from his writing, Michael is the publisher and editor-in-chief of Guernica Editions, a Canadian literary book publisher. Born in Italy and growing up in Montreal, with side trips to Glen Robertson (ON), Gboko (Nigeria), Mount Forest (ON), Toronto, Oakville and Hamilton, Michael now makes his home outside the town of Gananoque in the Thousand Islands area of Ontario.

Writing like a Reader: how to give readers what they want

In this workshop, we will read and study the first two pages of sample short stories, asking ourselves if the author has satisfied The Golden Rule of Writing: “until readers know what the main character wants, they don't know what the story is about; until they know what's at stake, they don't care."  Participants are encouraged to bring their own original story for comments that will, hopefully, assist the author in developing the main character, the pacing, and “”what’s at stake” in the storyline.

Billie Travalini

Her work has been published in RemnantsThe MothAnother Chicago MagazineLakeview International Journal of Literature and Art, as well as numerous anthologies. Her flash fiction stories, Never Again and Peachy were short-listed for the Ventral Review Award and the Bath Flash Fiction Award, respectively. Her memoir, Blood Sisters, was a finalist for the Breadloaf Prize and won the Lewes Clark Discovery Prize. Her edited work includes: On the Mason-Dixon Line: An Anthology of Contemporary Delaware Writers, Teaching Troubled Youth: A Practical Pedagogical Approach, and No Place Like Here: An Anthology of Southern Delaware Poetry and Prose. She received the Governor’s Award for the Arts (2014); the Delaware Division of the Arts Masters Award in Literature (2018), and the National Federation of Press Women Communicator of Achievement Award, the organization’s highest award (2019).  She teaches creative writing at Wilmington University, advocates for at-risk kids and the mentally ill, and co-founded and coordinates the Lewes Creative Writers Conference, now in its 17th year. You can find her online at http://www.btravalini.com

The Art of the Powerful Short Story Narrative

Bring your notebooks with your fragments, your unfinished stories, and ideas that just wouldn't launch, this workshop will talk you through a method of making them work. Using examples from his work Paul will show you how he has used his method to create powerful narratives then you can try it on your broken stories. You'll get feedback and input into your ideas. Because he is also a playwright and has written thirteen short stories for BBC Radio 4, Paul will also show you how to write that story for radio. Be prepared to work and learn a lot. 

Paul McVeigh

Paul McVeigh, author of the novel, The Good Son, which was the winner of The Polari First Novel Prize as well as the winner of The McCrea Literary Award is noted as a writer, playwright and festival organizer. His works have been shortlisted for the Prix du Roman Cezam; shortlisted for The Authors Club Best First Novel Award; finalist for The People's Book Prize; and promoted for the City Reads Brighton choice 2016. One story in his short story collection “Hollow,” was shortlisted as the  'Short Stoy of the Year' at The Irish Book Awards 2017.

Born in Belfast, Paul McVeigh is an award-winning writer whose work has been performed on stage and radio, published in print and been translated into French, German, Hungarian, Polish, Russian, Spanish, Turkish. He began his career as a playwright before moving to London where he wrote comedy shows, which were performed at the Edinburgh Festival and in London’s West End. His short stories have been published in literary journals and anthologies, read on BBC Radio 5, commissioned by BBC Radio 3 and 4, and Sky Arts TV. He is the co-founder of London Short Story Festival, of which, he was the Director and Curator for 2014 & ’15. He is Associate Director at Word Factory, the UK’s premier short story salon. The Good Son was selected from 160 books by The British Council and The Literary Platform to be one of twelve that will be part of The UK-Russia Year of Language and Literature 2016. Paul has read his work at festivals around the world and he represented the UK in Mexico 2015 and Turkey 2016 for The British Council.


International Conference on the Short Story in English 2025

Conference Secretariat

Advantage Group Event Experts
Unit C4, Nutgrove Office Park, Rathfarnham, Dublin 14, D14 W6K3, Ireland

Email & Updates

icsse2025@advantagegroup.ie