Our regular blog contributor Sam Burt shares another exciting project for readers of Bandit to get behind.

This week’s walk through the classics focuses on the

Sam Burt In ‘Why Rivers Run to the Sea’, one of the many flash fictions making up this collection, a river running through Bristol warns us: ‘Don’t try to slow me; I have somewhere to be.’ It’s a tiny, insistent, sensuous story, written in prose that manages to be both economical yet lyrical, and that wisely keeps the river’s personification […]

Tom Coganhan Editing at Bandit Fiction teaches you a few things. In the years I’ve worked here, I’ve got to read some brilliant stories, and some less than amazing stories. It’s made me question what makes a good short story. How would you attempt to write something brilliant? How would you know if you had achieved it? Because they are […]

‘In the cut. From vagina. A place to hide. To hedge your bet. But someplace safe, someplace free from harm’  by Harry Wilding Content Warning: Discussions of sexual violence and gender based violence Susanna Moore’s brutal novel, full of explicit violence and sex, was originally released in 1995, but its depictions of misogyny, the police force and victim blaming has […]

Downsizing Sally Rooney’s millennial autofiction into a one-minute fix.

Pitting the written word against the moving image in a battle to determine the best fiction.

This week’s walk through the classics focuses on questions of the morality of war and the human capability for justice in Aeschylus’s timeless trilogy ‘The Oresteia.’

Pitting the written word against the moving image in a battle to determine the best fiction.

Zoë Wells Finishing Zorrie and finding out, through his acknowledgements section, that Laird Hunt kept a copy of Virginia Woolf’s The Waves on hand throughout the writing process is the least surprising part of a novel that, generally, does not try very hard to surprise you. Zorrie is a gentle book, or at least is trying to be. It follows […]

Michael BirdFeedback and Editorials Editor Fyodor Dostoevsky’s The Brother’s Karamazov is a cornerstone of classic literature centering on the emotional, philosophical turmoil and legal fallout of the murder and robbery of the Karamazov patriarch, Fyodor. This 700+ page saga focuses on themes of faith, morality, and freedom in small-town Russia. And we’ve cut this epitome of Russian literary excellence down […]

One of the biggest challenges facing publishers like us is the fight to get our name out there. After a ten minute browse on Twitter, you’ll find countless small publishers, independent presses, and online ventures focused on getting the work of newer writers out there. The problem is trying to stand out from the crowd. It’s because of this that […]

Pitting the written word against the moving image in a battle to determine the best fiction.

Harry Wilding During my Creative Writing MA at the University of Nottingham this last year, advice and feedback from peers, tutors and established writers has, without a doubt, made me a better writer. However, the seminars led by literary agents and publishers (of all sizes) have paradoxically made me less confident I will ever get a novel traditionally published. Despite […]

A walk through your favourite classics, one book at a time. Michael A. Arnold Who enjoys playing war games? Me. Call of Duty, Battlefield, You do too (I assume) they are so much fun! But as we die and respawn over and over, because one mission is just too hard, it is worth thinking about what actual conflict is really […]

Pitting the written word against the moving image in a battle to determine the best fiction.

Compiled by Michael Bird What are you reading this month? Our team of international volunteers at Bandit Fiction share with us the highs and lows of the current book scene. Keep reading to learn what Bandit volunteers find engrossing or disappointing about their choice of novels, poetry and memoirs. 1. ‘White’ by Bret Easton Ellis It is difficult to tell whether […]

How does a publisher decide which submissions are good and which aren’t? What makes something ‘publishable’? And, perhaps more importantly, what makes something ‘unpublishable’?

Zoë Wells Lynn Buckle is the author of two novels, the latest of which, What Willow Says, was published by epoque press in May 2021. She lives on the Bog of Allen in Rathangen, Ireland, where she is a UNESCO Cities of Literature Writer in Residence. She is the founder of the Irish Writers’ Center’s Climate Writing Group and has […]

How do you fill the gaps where no words exist? That’s the question at the heart of What Willow Says, a novel which follows the interactions of a deaf granddaughter and her grandmother as the two connect over their shared love of nature. What Willow Says is author Lynn Buckle’s second novel, both published with epoque press. It’s a short […]

Gab Harvey Christina Delia writes horror fiction, plays and poetry. She holds a BFA in Writing for Film and Television from The University of the Arts in Philadelphia. Christina is an affiliate member of the Horror Writers Association (HWA).  Her plays have been performed in The Theater Project’s Think Fast Festival and The Secret Theatre’s Act One One: Act Festival. Her […]

Michael Bird Leo Tolstoy’s 1878 epic of adultery and bigotry ultra-condensed into a one-minute read. Fin. Which literary classics should we memeify next? Follow us on Twitter @BanditFiction and we’ll turn your favorite works of literature into expressions of our modern world. About the Contributor Michael Bird (he/him) is a Romania-based writer and journalist, with stories published by Bristol Short […]

Zoë Wells Mark Wilson is an author and visual artist based in Chicago. His first poetry pamphlet, PowerPoint Eulogy, was published by Fly on the Wall Press in 2021. It is a darkly comic collection of narrative poems that follow the life and death of the enigmatic Bill Motluck, and the PowerPoint presentation that eulogises him in a three-hour meeting […]

Zoë Wells With offices opening up and the end of the Work-From-Home year in sight, there might never have been a more relevant book to read than PowerPoint Eulogy, one of Fly on the Wall Press’s latest publications in its “Shorts” series, and artist Mark Wilson’s first poetry pamphlet. Then again, there might never have been a worse time to […]

Compiled by Michael Bird What are you reading this month? Our team of international volunteers at Bandit Fiction share with us the highs and lows of the current book scene. Keeping reading to learn what Bandit volunteers find engrossing or disappointing about their choice of novels, poetry and memoirs. Korean Poetry and Han Kang’s White Book I like to leaf through […]

Scott Colbert is the creator and cohost of The Imaginarium podcast, author of the acclaimed novella Barbed Wire Kisses, and was a popular contributor, cofounder and editor of the now defunct talkbacker.com and the supernaughts.com websites. He’s also published a collection of essays on the films of John Waters, Terry Gilliam, David Lynch and David Cronenberg. Scott resides in Phoenix, AZ and currently working on his next novel, A Pocketful of Broken Glass.

Prachi Pati *CONTENT WARNING: DEATH, XENOPHOBIA, SOME TORTURE AND GORE, MURDER.* Isn’t it great when you discover a book that is under hyped or was never on your radar and you just happened to stumble upon it and it made you really happy? Which is one such book you stumbled upon recently and loved and would recommend to everyone? Elatsoe, […]

An upcoming horror author from Scotland, Gavin Gardiner believes there are no greater terrors than that which reside within our own minds. For this reason, he specialises in the psychological, and pushes the themes and subjects of his work into areas seldom explored in the genre.

His debut novel is now available. Experience the nightmare:
https://linktr.ee/GGardinerHorror

L. Stephenson graduated university with a degree in Film & TV Screenwriting. Despite this achievement turning out to be spectacularly useless, after 11 long years, and featuring in a handful of horror anthologies, L. Stephenson finally realises a childhood dream of becoming a published author with the release of his first book ‘The Goners’.

Zoë Wells Ryan Dennis is a former Fulbright Scholar in Creative writing, and has taught at several universities. He recently completed a PhD at the National University of Ireland, Galway. His work has been published in a number of journals, including the Cimarron Review, The Threepenny Review, and Fusion. He is also a syndicated columnist in various agricultural journals around […]