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Bloomsbury has unveiled publishing plans after acquiring a number of short story collections. It aims to publish one a month from January to May next year and pitch the authors together for joint events and festivals.
Declaring 2012 “the year of the short story”, Bloomsbury will publish five début short story collections, with one written by twice Man Booker-longlisted novelist Jon McGregor. The publisher will circulate a short story sampler online, with printed versions to go to selected media and book groups. It will also release a short stories podcast to market the collections, featuring each author reading a story from their collection and talking about the genre, to be released at the end of January 2012.
Diving Belles by Lucy Wood will be the first collection published (19th January, hardback and e-book, £12.99), and is a series of stories set on Cornwall’s coast, where folklore slips into everyday life. McGregor’s first collection, This Isn’t the Sort of Thing That Happens to Someone Like You will then be published on 2nd February (hardback and e-book, £14.99), followed by Homesick by Roshi Fernando on 1st March (hardback £16.99, e-book £12.99), a series of stories about Sri Lankan families in south London.
A collection set in western Canada, Once You Break a Knuckle, will be published on 12th April. The collection is by D W Wilson (hardback and e-book £14.99), the winner of this year’s BBC National Short Story Award. Bloomsbury will also publish I am an Executioner on 10th May by début author Rajesh Parmeswaran.