Anthologisation and Irish Short Fiction

<p>This original new study explores the recent flowering of short fiction in Ireland. More specifically it discusses the cultural material and ideological usages of the short form in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries engaging with the forces that have helped to shape the production dissemination and reception of short stories over the last few decades in Ireland. The book is generically fluid and reads short fiction in its many guises from short-shorts to long stories and from standalone texts included in periodicals and online forums to stories that were published in volumes miscellanies and edited collections.</p><p>The book focuses especially upon anthologies and the act of anthologisation. The creation of an anthology is never a simple value-free act since those associated with the curation of anthologies are always obliged to make decisions that are variously material economic formal ideological and aesthetic. Some of these decisions are founded upon personal preferences others are grounded in subjective prejudices and biases; however all have consequences for the ways that a literary culture is created marketed taught and read. This new book explores this subject and looks at the consequences for ways that we think about Irish short fiction in the contemporary moment.</p>