• 1 The short stories proposed were between five and seven pages long and came from all English-speaki (...)
• 2 Frank O’Connor’s The Lonely Voice (1962) and Sean O’Faolain’s The Short Story (1948) were practica (...)
• 3 Short story conferences were not frequent. There were, however, some important ones, such as the s (...)

1The idea of launching a journal on the short story in English arose in the 1980s, in the context of training candidates for the French national examinations for lycée and collège teachers. At the time, the Critical Reading of a Short Story was the decisive test for the Certificat d’Aptitude au Professorat du Second Degré in France, better known by its initials CAPES. Candidates had four hours to prepare and twenty minutes to present a critical analysis of a short story1 and answer questions from the jury. The test was stimulating; however, preparing for it was problematic: while works on the novel and poetry were abundant, the bibliography on the short story was, at the time, sparse.2 Monographs were limited, and to cover the theoretical aspects of their courses, the instructors had to resort to classic essays, many of which dated back to the nineteenth century, to introductions to anthologies, and to proceedings of conferences on the short story held abroad.3 Since 1963, there had also been Studies in Short Fiction, published by Newberry College (South Carolina, USA); however, the journal ceased publication in 1999.

• 4 The results of the seminar were published posthumously. Andrée-Marie Harmat, Yves Iehl, Jean Nimis (...)
• 5 Simone Vauthier from the University of Strasbourg, Sylvère Monod from Paris III, and Michel Gresse (...)

2At the University of Angers, several members of the English department were involved in preparing for the national examinations at the time, and the short story attracted some of them. For Philippe Séjourné, Dean of the Faculty, and Pamela Valette, it was out of personal interest; Jeanne Devoize, Head of the Department, had taken part in Prof. Andrée-Marie Harmat’s seminar on the short story at the University of Toulouse;4 Ben Forkner had written extensively on the short story and prefaced anthologies of short stories published by Penguin. Encouraged by their colleagues in Nantes, including Pierre Yvard, Director of the Institute of Languages, and supported by several leading figures in English literary studies at the time,5 members of the English Department at Angers founded the “Centre d’Études et de Recherches sur la Nouvelle en Langue Anglaise” (Centre for Studies and Research on the Short Story in English) to provide a foundation for specialist research into the short story.

• 6 John Paine has since provided the link between the MLA and the Journal, which was launched at the (...)
• 7 Anthony Burgess, a friend of Ben Forkner, wanted part of his archive to be preserved at the Univer (...)

3Drawing on the example of an inspiring symposium organized by the Kenyon Review, Ben Forkner wanted to go beyond a closed circle of local scholars, to solicit contributions from specialists in the short story from all over the world, and he proposed to bring short story writers into the university forum, moving towards a dialectical approach to the study of the short story. With this in mind, he organized the Centre’s first international conference, the first in France devoted exclusively to the short story, and used the occasion to launch an English-language short story journal. The conference would be held in French and English, on 21 January 1983, in association with the city of Angers, in the historic premises of the Toussaint Municipal Library, under the aegis of Jean-Claude Brouillard, curator of the University Library and director of the University Press. Its scheduling was widely publicized in France, through the Société des Anglicistes de l’Enseignement Supérieur (SAES) network, of which Jeanne Devoize was a board member. It was also announced in the USA through the MLA, thanks to John Paine. After spending a year in Angers as a Fulbright scholar, J. Paine obtained a position at Belmont College, Nashville, Tennessee, whose administration agreed to join forces with the Angers research group with a view to an institutional editorial collaboration to launch a French and American journal on the short story in English in France.6 The announcement of the conference included three guests of honor: the Canadian writer, Mavis Gallant (1922-2014), and two British writers John Wain (1925-1994) and Anthony Burgess (1917-1993). As renowned short story writers, the first two were naturally and entirely devoted to the short story; Anthony Burgess, known to the general public thanks to the notorious success of the film adaptation of his short novel A Clockwork Orange (1962) by Stanley Kubrick (1974), abhorred the short story. To kick off the debates, Ben Forkner asked Anthony Burgess7 to give an inaugural lecture on the evolution of the short story and its various forms. The lecture went down in history not only for its literary interest, but also because Burgess gave a memorable one-man show of erudition and humor to the audience of academics, secondary school teachers, students, and many people from Anjou. At the end of the conference, Ben Forkner announced the launch of the Journal of the Short Story in English / Les cahiers de la nouvelle (JSSE), with a first issue published in March of the same year.

• 8 A retired secondary school literature teacher, Joël Glaziou is the organizer of “Dits et Nouvelles (...)
• 9 Since the disappearance of the short story test in the CAPES competitive examination in 1998, the (...)

4The interest shown by French academics in the short story and the renown of the guests at the JSSE launch conference helped to make the event a memorable one for both the organizers and the guests, and to ensure that its impact was felt and followed up. Several subsequent events bear witness to this. For example, the local tourist office commissioned an insert with photos and advertising about Angers and the region, which the JSSE included in its pages for some ten years. Thanks to Joël Glaziou, who took part in the conference for several years afterwards, the Bibliothèque Municipale hosted the “Mardis de la nouvelle,” which in turn contributed to the birth of a French-language journal on the short story under the direction of the organizer.8 Since that conference, several academics from the Angers English Department have worked and are still working to promote the reading and study of the short story. They have systematically organized themed international conferences devoted exclusively to the short story, with renowned short story writers as guests of honor, to provide the Journal with critical exchanges based on papers, interviews, and round tables between writers and academics on key aspects of the genre, tackled in a targeted manner. The conferences were annual, or every two years, and attracted numerous French academics who trained students for the CAPES exam. As a result, the Journal gained in visibility and quickly established itself as a benchmark journal for French research into English language literature. It was welcomed by the Société des Anglicistes de l’Enseignement Supérieur (SAES) in the same way as other scholarly associations, with the privilege offered to members from the Angers English Department of organizing a workshop on the short story at the Society’s annual conference. Selections of papers from these workshops have been published in the issues of the Journal on an annual basis.9

• 10 Like Michel Gresset and Sylvère Monod in France, Patrick Samway and Suzanne Ferguson in the US, et (...)

6The 1980s in France were marked by structuralism, which was also present in the issues of the journal. Nevertheless, the inclusion of articles by American academics focusing on ethnicity, feminism, gender, and related topics reflected prevailing trends in American literary criticism, ensuring that the journal’s content remained balanced. This balance was also apparent in other respects. Alongside papers from leading keynote speakers,10 the journal featured articles by academics at the start of their careers, illustrating various approaches. A number of the latter were sent spontaneously from the United States and Great Britain to John Paine, who in turn referred them to the Angers team. With the discontinuation of Studies in Short Fiction, the number of unsolicited manuscripts increased, enabling the journal to compensate for the decline in submissions from French academics, which was due to the removal of the short story from the CAPES curriculum in 1998.

• 11 We co-edited the journal until 2012, after which it was edited by Linda Collinge and Michelle Ryan (...)

7In 1999, Ben Forkner generously offered me the chance to take over from him as editor of the Journal. It was a huge honor, and I was very keen to give it a go. However, I did not feel up to the task alone. I asked Linda Collinge to come with me so that we could take it on together. She agreed, and I was grateful.11 The dozen or so years of our collaboration have been marked by intense work, punctuated by key moments linked to research and its circulation, publishing, and dissemination, always with the same objective in mind: to solicit contributions from specialists in the short story from all over the world and promote the short story worldwide.

• 12 Respectively in JSSE 50 (Spring 2008), 58 (Spring 2012), 68 (Spring 2017), 44 (Spring 2005), 49 (A (...)
• 13 For example, “Jewish Identity and Otherness in the Modern Short Story” (JSSE 32, Spring 1999), or (...)

8To continue along the path laid out by Ben Forkner, a series of actions had to be taken, the most essential of which are outlined below. The JSSE adopted the principle of double-blind peer review, which at the time was more systematically practised in the US than in France. This necessitated a substantial expansion of the reading committee. A new, well-staffed committee was formed from academics who had attended JSSE conferences and SAES workshops, as well as an honorary committee made up of short story writers. The new selection process, which involved more back-and-forth between readers, authors, and editors, cemented a warm relationship between the journal’s management and the members of the committee. Some of them were invited to edit monograph issues devoted to writers of whom they were specialists using brevity as an angle of approach. Volumes on Virginia Woolf, Edith Wharton, D. H. Lawrence, Henry Roth, Ernest Hemingway, John McGahern, etc.12 were published in this way. For the conferences, we opted for themes directly related to brevity, such as the contribution of other literary genres and the arts to the economy of the short story, or issues which emerge in a specific way in the short story, such as the relationship of the individual to otherness or space.13 A selection of papers from the conferences appeared in thematic issues.

• 14 On revues.org with a two-year lag between the publication of the paper volume and its online avail (...)

9Several articles from the monograph and thematic issues contributed to Gale Cengage’s Short Story Criticism volumes, giving the journal greater visibility and prestige. However, it was the Journal’s online publication in January 2009, under the editorial supervision of Xavier Lachazette, that helped to make it even more accessible and visible.14 As the only academic journal devoted to the short story, JSSE was already a key source of information and a link that brought together specialists in short fiction. Going online increased its visibility and gave the magazine’s digital space the added dimension of a platform for information and exchange on news about short stories and short fiction. The site featured announcements of festivals, competitions, conferences, congresses, and publications on short fiction in Europe and the United States. The appropriation of the JSSE by international researchers indicated the desire of some of them to network.

• 15 Chaired by Michelle Ryan, assisted by Ailsa Cox and Elke D’hoker, the ENSFR (<https://ensfr.univ-a (...)

10After several unsuccessful attempts to fund this networking by responding to national (ANR) and European calls for projects, this venture was carried out entirely unfunded, thanks to the enthusiasm and hard work of Angers academics and their French and European partners, all of whom were involved in the Journal. Under the impetus of Michelle Ryan, co-editor of the journal from 2012, the idea of founding a European Network for Short Fiction Research (ENSFR) was achieved in 2013, with the support of Ailsa Cox, Elke D’hoker, Gérald Préher, and other members of the Journal’s advisory board. The network currently comprises some one hundred academics and its work is in line with the JSSE.15

• 16 No member of the JSSE editorial board in France has received remuneration or time off for their wo (...)
• 17 Ben Forkner, Jeanne Devoize, Pamela Valette, Emmanuel Vernadakis, Linda Collinge, Michelle Ryan, G (...)
• 18 The building on the Faculty of Arts that houses research on humanities.

11During its forty years of existence, JSSE has been generously16 served by the members of its editorial boards17 and by its dedicated Reading Committee, which currently totals more than seventy members. The journal has made it possible to disseminate developments in short story research, to raise awareness of its practitioners and their achievements, to promote dialogue between short story writers and critics on specific features of the genre, and to provide a forum for academic discussion on its origins, its manifestations at different points in its evolution, its openings, its contribution to our knowledge, and its impact on our lives. After thirty conferences, dozens of interviews and round tables, and several posthumous or unpublished short stories published in the JSSE, the short story has become a fundamental feature of the University of Angers research. The glass walls of the Maison de la Recherche Germaine Tillion,18 decorated with quotations from short story writers taken from the pages of the Journal, bear witness to this. The Journal of the Short Story in English has succeeded in endowing this building with an exceptional aura: at the closing symposium of the European Short Forms Beyond Borders project, run by the University of Angers between 2020 and 2023, guests described the venue as a “sanctuary for the short story.”