About Ian Nettleton:
Short fiction: Shortlisted for the Edinburgh International Flash Fiction Award 2020 with the story, All the times he tried and failed. Longlisted for the Reflex Fiction Winter 2019 competition and shortlisted for the Bridport Prize Flash Fiction competition 2019. Longlisted for the Ellipsis Flash Fiction Collection Competition 2020. Longlisted for the Letter Review flash fiction competition 2023 and shortlisted for the Scratch A4 short story competition 2023. Long fiction: Runner-up in the 2014 inaugural Bath Novel Award and the Bridport Prize's Peggy Chapman-Andrews First Novel Award for The Last Migration. Winner of the Bath Novel Award 2023 for Out of Nowhere. Ian is an associate lecturer for undergraduate creative writing courses at the Open University, and also teaches on the Open University MA in Creative Writing. He teaches for the National Centre for Writing and runs private classes. Ian's work is published in Angles (iande Press, 2006), Not About Love (Gatehouse Press, 2008) and The Petrified World and other tales (2018) and the Scottish Arts Trust Story Award anthology, Life on the Margins and other stories (Scottish Arts Trust 2020)and Scratch A4 (2023). He was an editorial assistant on Writing Talk - Interviews with Writers about the Creative Process (Routledge, 2020). |
Photograph: Martin Figura
Shortlisted for the Edinburgh International Flash Fiction Award 2020: All the times he tried and failed The car was slewing in the deep snow that was falling when Charlie jumped out of the back window. He was not long for this world, and as we drove to the vets, he took his chance and out he went, through the gap between the frame and the glass. Dad slammed on the brakes and leapt out. ‘Tom! Tom! The traffic!’ mum said, but he never gave it a thought and the bus that was bearing down in the opposite direction must have missed him by inches. As the wail of the horn went slowly by and all those faces pressed to the glass, I looked for dad and when the bus was gone, trailing its red lights, I saw him running down the pavement by the art shop and the barber’s. He seemed to run like a man in a river, like his trousers were waterlogged and he was floundering in his black coat. The cat – Charlie – I couldn’t see. He was long gone down some dark passage and to this day I don’t know where he went. I sat in the quiet and waited. Mum tapped her nails on the wooden dashboard, so full of irritation even then. My sister sitting by me was too young to understand, but I had my face to the window and listened to the hush of the snow falling out of the sky and it was a picture. I see it now. The whole world was quiet and when I saw dad walking back and stopping, bending over, his hands on his knees, I saw the same man I would see through the years, all the times he tried and failed to place his hands on something he loved that was just out of reach. |
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