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Aberfeldy Author Longlisted for Prize
Aberfeldy hit the literary highlights when Linda Cracknell’s collection of short stories ‘The Searching Glance’ was announced on the longlist for this year’s Frank O’Connor International Short Story Award.
Linda is joined on the list by leading names of international literature including Booker Prize Winners Anne Enright and Roddy Doyle.
Now entering its fourth year, the Frank O’Connor Award, which offers a cash prize of 35,000 euros goes from strength to strength. With a longlist featuring writers from all continents, the Award is playing a leading role in reviving the short story format.
In ‘The Seaching Glance’ the worlds inhabited by the characters are diverse – a hill walker is unknowingly watched over as he lies dying on a Highland hill; a Glasgow party-goer searches years later for a woman who may have mistaken him for a monster; a mysterious prize is sought in the perpetual daylight of midsummer Orkney. Whether it is in a suburban garden or on the stark skyline of a Borders hill, the landscape and seasonal extremes provoke and unsettle.
Linda Cracknell’s stories are multi-layered and brooding with longing and loss, allowing the reader a ‘searching glance’ at characters’ lives. With touches of the surreal and hard strokes of reality, they are stories that linger in the mind.
Local fingers will be crossed for Linda when the winner of the Award is announced in Cork in September.
Signed copies of ‘The Searching Glance’ are available from The Watermill, price £14.99, where its launch took place - attended by over 100 people - in March.
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