So there's something called The Novella Award -- "a writing competition that celebrates new fiction in the novella form" -- and they've now announced their shortlist, with the winner to be announced 7 October.
As the report by Katy Guest in the Independent on Sunday observes, it does at least answer that burning literary question of what the hell is a novella (or at least how long should it be) -- which they then manage to get wrong in the headline (Novella Award organisers have defined a novel as being a piece of fiction between 20,000 and 40,000 words).
Yes, apparently it's 'the Richard Ford solution'/definition:
As the report by Katy Guest in the Independent on Sunday observes, it does at least answer that burning literary question of what the hell is a novella (or at least how long should it be) -- which they then manage to get wrong in the headline (Novella Award organisers have defined a novel as being a piece of fiction between 20,000 and 40,000 words).
Yes, apparently it's 'the Richard Ford solution'/definition:
"When a writer approaches the 20,000-word mark," Ford wrote in The Granta Book of the American Long Story, "he knows he's edging out of the country of the short story; likewise when he passes the 40,000-word mark, he's edging into the country of the novel."