Monocle 24 Radio Podcast
18 May 2017
Longlist Announced for the RA & Pin Drop Short Story Award 2017
We are delighted to announce the longlist for this year’s RA & Pin Drop Short Story Award – an award in collaboration with the Royal Academy of Arts.
Dame Penelope Wilton, the award-winning actress who has enjoyed an extensive career starring in numerous films and television productions including Calendar Girls, The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel and Downton Abbey, will announce and narrate this year’s winning story on 23rd June at a special awards ceremony at the RA. The award is judged by Pin Drop Co-founders Elizabeth Day and Simon Oldfield, and the RA’s Director of Artistic Programmes, Tim Marlow.
Simon Oldfield commented:
“This year, we have received an unprecedented number of entries from across the globe and the quality has been extraordinary. Pin Drop champions superb short fiction and we’re delighted to see both established and emerging writers on the longlist, with stories that capture unique voices and new writing with confidence and verve.”
Longlist
Adrian Todd Zuniga, Lincoln Wimbley Writes a Story at 37,000 Feet
Anna Stewart, The Way I Breathed
Anne O’Brien, These Silver Fish
Anthony McGuinness, Fair Exchange is No Robbery
Antonia Honeywell, Dora Maar and the Secret Tree
Arthur Allan, Before the Curtain
Carol Farrelly, Emergency
Cathy Thomas, Pigs
Catriona Ward, Lula-Belle
Cherise Saywell, Morelia Spilota
Ciarán Collins, Angela
Craig Burnett, Feathers Thick with Oil
Douglas W. Milliken, Heart’s Last Pass
Emily Bullock, Freshwater
Hanna Ali, Bloated
Hannah Persaud, Dress Rehearsal
Harry Godfrey, Lobster Man
Honoria Beirne, Rafferty
Jarred McGinnis, Rough Beasts
Joanna Campbell, Brad’s Rooster Food
Jude Cook, Being Here
Juno Baker, The Rules of the Game
KM Elkes, Shoreham Street
Melanie Whipman, Undine
Philippa Holloway, Like a Message
Rachel Stevenson, English Beach
Rebecca F. John, Paper Chains
Ruth Brandt, Going West
Sarah Evans, My Mother’s Story
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Supported by Audible.
24 March 2015
Dawkins seeks out his inner Bertie – Pin Drop in the Evening Standard
At last night’s Pin Drop, Richard Dawkins regaled Soho House with his parodies of Jeeves & Wooster. The ES Londoner’s Diary reports, Dawkins seeks out his inner Bertie.
“The Londoner has been marvelling recently at the fact that Professor Richard Dawkins has been quiet of late, by his standards at least. Now the mystery may have been solved: he’s been busy with Jeeves & Wooster.
The atheist and academic was at Soho House for a talk hosted by short-story celebrants Pin Drop last night, where he read tales adapted from, and voiced in the style of, P G Wodehouse. Dawkins writes the stories for his clan gatherings so there are no plans for release, perhaps because, he joked, “the family are pretty litigious with the Wodehouse estate”.
26 September 2013
Pin Drop at the London Design Festival
Pin Drop was recently invited by the Crafts Council of Ireland to stage a one-off narration in their fantastic space at Tent London in Brick Lane’s Old Truman Brewery. The exhibition, Vernacular, was being staged as part of London Design Festival and featured the work of over 20 designers including this amazing desk by Irish architects O’Donnell + Tuomey.
To fit in with the overall theme of the event, Pin Drop asked acclaimed Irish actress Lisa Dwyer Hogg (currently appearing at the National Theatre in Richard Eyre’s Liola – and yes, that is Lisa on the poster) to read a short story by one of Ireland’s foremost contemporary writers, Kevin Barry. Lisa read Atlantic City – a poignant, funny and telling short story that even included the opportunity for Lisa to launch into a pitch-perfect rendition of Stevie Wonder’s Happy Birthday. Lisa narrated while sitting in a particularly comfortable chair designed by O’Driscoll Furniture and upholstered in the finest Donegal tweed.
We had a fantastic night, enjoying free Jamesons whisky cocktails (absolutely lethal ones at that) and welcomed a whole host of new Pin Drop attendees, including the actor Stephen Rea and the designer Paul Costelloe. Thank you to Julia Ravenscroft and Ann Mulrooney and all her team at the Crafts Council of Ireland, our sponsors Audible UK and, most importantly, Lisa herself who was a really brilliant narrator.
29 July 2013
Pin Drop at Regent’s Park Open Air Theatre
On 11 June, we hosted a wonderful evening at the Regent’s Park Open Air Theatre, holding a Pin Drop narration overlooking the beautiful picnic lawn before a spellbinding production of To Kill A Mockingbird. Highly-acclaimed actress, Juliet Oldfield, read Bernice Bobs Her Hair, a short story by F. Scott Fitzgerald.