The Austrian media didn’t just cover the 13th International Conference on the Short Story in English in German. There was also media coverage in English with Johnny Bliss, a young reporter from the ORF (Austrian national TV and radio) FM4 programme. He caught some of my bytes as Co-Director Vienna and scooped Pulitzer prize-winning author and conference workshop leader Robert Olen Butler with a very generous interview on the craft of writing, the way he did it, the downs and ups, flash fiction and some wonderful bytes from his micro stories in his collection Severance, a collection I discovered at the same conference when it was held in Cork in 2008 – 62 stories of 240 words! Just read and listen here: http://fm4.orf.at/stories/1748360/
In another FM4 interview, Johnny Bliss also spoke to Doron Rabinovici about “the question we can’t answer”. See and listen at http://fm4.orf.at/stories/1749731/
Doron is an Austrian/Israeli writer and historian who participated in the conference along with other Austrians, Friederike Mayroecker, Guenther Kaip, Bernhard Strobel and Judith Nika Pfeifer. (The tom-toms have it that Judith may be interviewed early 2015, so stay tuned for a possible Part 5 of this series.)
That winds up what we have on the Austrian national media coverage of the 13th International Conference on the Short Story in English. The 14th International Conference on the Short Story in English will be held in Shanghai, China, in June 2016. As Co-Director of the Vienna Conference, I hope to see the participation of Austrian writers at the conference in China in 2016.
If there are any Austrians sponsors out there, do get in touch about helping Austrian writers cover travel and accommodation in Shanghai in 2016. I am pleased to say that the Vienna Conference has been able to make a donation to a fund administered by Literaturhaus Wien to cover the conference registration fee(s) for participating Austrian writers.
The Short Story Conferences, I believe, are a way to pass on the torch in the interest of story in its many cultural manifestations. So, Onwards!
