‘The Boarded Window’ is a story by the American author Ambrose Bierce, who is also remembered for his witty The Devil’s Dictionary and for his mysterious disappearance in around 1914. Like many of Bierce’s tales, ‘The Boarded Window’ contains elements of the horror genre. The story is about a man […]
By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University) ‘A Woman Speaks’ is a poem by the African-American poet Audre Lorde (1934-92), published in her 1978 collection The Black Unicorn. Lorde was a self-described ‘Black, lesbian, mother, warrior, poet.’ In the poem, a Black woman addresses society and warns that she has not […]
By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University) What are the best short stories about painters, artists, and the world of art? From Gothic pioneers like Edgar Allan Poe to realist writers like Edith Wharton, masters of the short story have often touched upon the subject of art and painting, using the […]
How did hyacinths, the popular flowers, get their name? And what have they to do with homoerotic love, wind, discuses, and Greek mythology? As ever, we’re here to answer these questions, by taking a closer look at the classical myth of Hyacinth and how he came to give his name […]
By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University) Many notable short stories focus on the rough passage from childhood to adulthood. Of course, the transition from ‘child’ to ‘adult’ does not happen overnight, and is not the result of a single epiphany of crucial moment, but writers of short fiction often distil […]