Editor Interview: Liars' League

Great short stories

Granta is great for variety and new work by established authors; Litro for tomorrow's talent today, and new voices from London and Europe; UntitledBooks for up and coming writers; Slice for fantastic design and great American fiction from newcomers and well-known writers alike.

My personal favourite fiction writers (especially short stories) are Raymond Carver, Angela Carter, J.G. Ballard, Martin Amis, Helen Simpson, Will Self, Miranda July, Clare Wigfall, Saki, Bukowski, Fitzgerald, Waugh and Arthur Conan Doyle. In terms of the writers Liars' League has published, I'm a big fan of Niall Boyce, Emily Cleaver, Liam Hogan, Jessica Lott, C.T. Kingston, Gregory Norminton and Kachi Ozumba (the last two also have novels out - you should buy them!)

Liars' League is unique in that our actors read the stories, not the writers. Once we select the stories, we "cast" them with trained actors from our company, who then rehearse and finally read the stories in front of a live London audience. This not only means that the writers can relax with a beer and watch their stories being performed, but also that overseas authors don't have to fly thousands of miles in order to have their story read (although some have ...) Our night is basically a cross between a performance and a reading: live literature at its best! We also record the stories as MP3s so that people can listen to them on the website (www.liarsleague.com) or download them as a podcast afterwards.

Read it out loud to yourself first so that you can see where it does and doesn't work as a performed piece - and don't go over 2000 words! Also, if we give you feedback, keep trying.

1500-2000 words long, spellchecked(!), beautifully-written, funny, poignant and sharp, with a great ending and a really strong voice (whether narratorial or authorial). Oh, and submitted in accordance with our guidelines. Please always read the submission guidelines!

The three top mistakes are
1) Sending work that's too long (i.e. over 2,000 words)
2) Not submitting to one of our themes (they change monthly)
3) Sending us poetry or script. Again, PLEASE check out the website before sending us your submission - we do not publish poetry!

We don't need or ask for any covering letter - just your work. That said, we're happy to hear a little bit about you if you want to tell us, but please don't send us a 1,000 word biography listing everything you've ever published. We won't read it (well, not unless we want to publish your story anyway) and may see it as a sign of insecurity :)

We read every last word of every story, as long as it's submitted correctly - although we can usually tell whether or not we're going to like it from the first page or two.

It's read by up to seven of our editors (always at least three or four) and if we feel changes need to be made, we will send editorial notes and ask for a rewrite. Most, though, we will accept as they are if we like them.

I check the website daily for new submissions, download them, anonymise them if the author has left their name in, and convert them into Word if they aren't already. Then I save them to that month's folder until after the theme deadline. Once the deadline has passed I send them out to my fellow editors and read them all myself as well, scoring them as YES/NO/MAYBE (and some other categories in between) as I go. Then we all get together in the pub, compare notes and fight for our favourites!