Sarah-Clare Conlon

Biography

Manchester-based Salt Prize-winning writer and one half of spoken word and music combo Les Malheureux with author David Gaffney, regularly performing around the UK. My micro fiction and poetry is published in Flash, The Hat You Wear, The Pygmy Giant, Spilling Ink Review, Ferment, Featherlit, Spilt Milk, Rainy City Stories, Duality and Jawbreakers, among other places. Founder member of the FlashTag writing collective, who organise standing-room-only spoken word events in Manchester and publish flash fiction anthologies, including Quickies: Short Stories For Adults. I also write the award-winning arts blog Words & Fixtures, and work for Manchester Literature Festival, Chorlton Arts Festival, The Literateur and National Flash-Fiction Day. "One of the most interesting and inspiring authors writing flashes today" - Flash: The International Short-short Story Magazine "The lit scene's most chic starlet" - Reader! Read Faster! (Blackwell's Manchester) "The detail in her observations can turn the most mundane setting to one you want to experience ... her style keeps listeners eagerly wanting more" - Manchester Music “Splendid” – Jason Cooke, Breakfast Of Champions, All FM “Intruiging” – Manchester Wire “Thoroughly funny” – Onward, Manchester “Brilliant” – Manchester Music "Wonderful!" - Future Underground “An enigmatic scene of comedy” – Tim J Callaghan “Ace - haven’t laughed that hard in ages” – Fictions Of Every Kind “Delightful” - Eight Cuts Gallery

Samples

Such A Natural by Sarah-Clare Conlon Mr Green puts the green in greengrocer. His juicy Coxes loll in wicker baskets; his dirty carrots nestle in wooden boxes. “Nothing wrong with a bit of muck,” he says so often his wife repeats it in her sleep. Still, she will admit they’ve not been able to keep the tweedy types away since branching out into seasonal, organic and local. “No airmiles here, eh Mrs Green?” he informs them, via her, at least twice a day. No funny carpet tile patches of fake grass, either. No tacky plastic frames with interchangeable digits. No orange and lime starbursts. Mr Green’s displays are pared down, and he’s particularly proud of the slate plant markers he daubs prices onto with special chalk. All it takes is a damp cloth and a cocked eyebrow for Mrs Green to wipe away the rogue apostrophes. It wouldn’t do for the Guardian readers to spot them. (First published, as Natural, in Jawbreakers, National Flash-Fiction Day & Completely Novel, 2012)

All poems are copyright of the originating author. Permission must be obtained before using or performing others' poems.