NORA NADJARIAN: January 2010

Sunday, January 31, 2010

The Secret Goldfish

A lot on my mind lately. Good things, mostly, which keep me busy. It's good to have deadlines to work towards, and I've done some writing, editing and sending off this weekend.

Now I'm going to relax a little, before starting to worry about my next big deadline for what I think could be my biggest challenge yet.

Sorry I'm being a little secretive here, but I'll let you know more when I have more details myself.

I realised a couple of days ago that I have a used bilingual Russian-English copy of "Catcher in the Rye" bought at a book stall a few years ago. (Moscow Progress Publishers 1979)

"... He wrote this terrific book of short stories The Secret Goldfish, in case you never heard of him. The best one in it was "The Secret Goldfish." It was about this little kid that wouldn't let anybody look at his goldfish because he'd bought it with his own money. It killed me..."

From The Catcher in the Rye by J.D.Salinger

Sunday, January 17, 2010

Cheque Republic

You think I can't spell?

Actually, spelling has always been one of my strong points.

Well, here is my story Cheque Republic, inspired by a visit to --yes, Czech Republic.

Up in LITnIMAGE, with other great writing by Eric Beeny, David Erlewine, Greg Gerke, Tom Mahony, Glenn Vanstrum, Jared Ward and Kate Wyer.

Sunday, January 10, 2010

Happy New Writing

I've been on holiday. Or more truthfully, I've been a bit lazy.
It's already the 10th of January, and it's time to think about new writing. But before I do that, here is my lovely, lucky story for 2010: Elephant in the City. It was written in 2009 but only recently published at Curly Red Stories.

Biography

Nora Nadjarian is an award-winning Cypriot poet and writer. She has represented Cyprus at literary events and festivals in Europe and elsewhere, including Frankfurt Book Fair and Dresdner Bardinale and within the framework of EU2016, in the poetry project ‘In European Poetry I want to live’ (Amsterdam).

Her work has been cited or published in the Guardian, the Irish Times and the Telegraph and has also won prizes and commendations in international competitions, including the Commonwealth Short Story Competition, the Féile Filíochta International Poetry Competition, the Binnacle International Ultra-Short Competition and the Seán Ó Faoláin Short Story Prize. Her work deals with the themes of women, refugees, identity, exile, love and loss, as well as the political situation in Cyprus.

In Cyprus she is best known for her book of short stories “Ledra Street” (2006) but has had poetry and short fiction published internationally. Her work was included in A River of Stories, an anthology of tales and poems from across the Commonwealth, illustrated by Jan Pieńkowski, Best European Fiction 2011 (Dalkey Archive Press), Being Human (Bloodaxe Books, 2011) and Capitals (Bloomsbury, 2017).Her latest publication is the collection of short stories Selfie (Roman Books, 2017) and her short plays “Mermaid” and “Catalina” were recently performed at the Old Red Lion theatre in London.

Her special interest lies in the teaching of creative writing. In recent years she has facilitated several creative writing workshops– in English, Greek and German – at schools, universities and prisons in Cyprus and Germany.