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The story 'Dirty Weekend' wins the 2008 Olive Cook Award for short fiction.

Reviews:

'Alison MacLeod’s collection is a baker’s dozen of excellence book-ended by brilliance... At the core of the "tale"’ – and these are modern fables that unravel and decipher reality as much as create it – is a series of complex meditations on the idea of attraction.... MacLeod’s stories detail the wayward flickerings of desire with settings from, among others, the bleak twilight
world of IKEA, coastal Nova Scotia and the wistful seediness of Brighton... "Fifteen Modern Tales of Attraction" is a potent and heady mix. Avoiding the perils of both overt erudition and sentimental whimsy, the whole is ably piloted by MacLeod’s total control of her material. Highly recommended. ' Time Out (London and Sydney)

'Alison MacLeod is a strikingly original voice. Her stories create
intimate worlds... and make the reader live in them with an
intensity which is haunting, disturbing and above all beguiling.' Helen Dunmore, novelist, poet

'MacLeod's fictions are modern indeed. They are fragmentary evocations of desire and its mysteries, passing glimpses into minds and hearts: tender; pierced; translucent.... [Her] characters are strong, and they are worth listening to...' The Guardian (2007)

'Beautifully crafted, they range from brilliantly observed humour - customers stampeding in Ikea at the store's launch in Notes for a Chaotic Century - to the haunting and heart-rending - the tender elegy to a middle-aged love affair in Dirty Weekend. Immensely readable.' The Big Issue

'Her observations are brilliant... she continually makes the ordinary shocking and the shocking marvelous and inevitable...These stories make compelling, humbling reading.' Sue Roe, critic

'MacLeod's range – spanning the movingly real to the mysteriously surreal – is excitingly, imaginatively realised and unified by an awareness of the dark menace of love's uncertainty.' Metro (London)

The Guardian (2008) says: ‘There’s a giddying range of things to think about in MacLeod’s collection of short stories, which range from gleeful comedy to aching tragedy. Desire in its many, sometimes disturbing, sometimes comic, forms fizzes through all of these stories, from a man who goes chasing after a pregnant woman in the midst of a riot at Ikea, to ECT patient Gloria who thrills to the presence of her anaesthetist, “Dr Numb” and a 19-year-old girl who finds herself erotically drawn to a man on his deathbed. There’s also a 21st century version of the harrowing tale of Heloise and Abelard retold through email exchanges.  The collection is as formally inventive as it is original.'

2010

June 16-19: The 2010 International Conference of the Short Story (Toronto), including readings by Margaret Atwood, Ali Smith, Alison MacLeod and a host of international writers.

2009

Nov. 13-15: the 2009 NAWE Conference. Alison MacLeod chairs 'Writing, Risk-Taking and Rule-Breaking in the Academy'.

Oct. 21st: Alison MacLeod reads with Panos Karnezis for Lancaster LitFest . The event is chaired by Carys Davies, author of Some New Ambush .

Sept. 27th: Alison chairs 'Literary Lifelines' with Helen Dunmore, AL Kennedy and Amit Chaudhuri for the Small Wonder Short Story Festival (Charleston Farmhouse, East Sussex).

Sept. 26th: Alison MacLeod reads for The 2009 Small Wonder Festival of the Short Story as part of the Asham Award celebration.

Sept. 11: Alison reads from 'The Light' for London Magazine at the ICA, London (7.30 start).

July 16: Alison MacLeod reads for The Stinging Fly at the Irish Writers' Centre in Dublin.

June 1 - 6: 'The Essence of Fiction' - short story course offered by the Arvon Foundation. Alison MacLeod joins the group on June 3rd for an evening reading.

May 15: Alison MacLeod chairs 'Voyages into the Mind' with Hilary Mantel and Ann Wroe for the Charleston Literary Festival

May 13 : Alison MacLeod reads at the Barbican Library at 7 pm for 'Love Stories'. She is joined by the actress Siobhan Redmond.

April 25: A 'City Reads' event: Alison MacLeod leads a morning workshop on the writing of historical fiction for Brighton & Hove Libraries. Click here and scroll down to April 25.

March 4: Alison MacLeod reads with short story writer Vanessa Gebbie at Waterstone's in Brighton as a celebration of World Book Day.

Feb. 26: Alison MacLeod chairs a panel discussion on The New Uncanny: Tales of Unease. She is joined by editor Ra Page (Comma Press) and contributors Nicholas Royle and Adam Marek.

All author photo credits on this site: Kate MacLeod Photography .