INTRO TO BIRD THIEF

By popular request – well four readers anyway – insist that I add the following memoir to my blog. This I am happy to do because I consider this work one of my best and most sincerely accomplished. I wrote it in 2004 and offered it to two literary journals but both weren’t interested. Both had, I might add, academic backgrounds and what would an academic editor know about honest to god story telling. Then I sent it off to Ralf Wessman at Famous Reporter, Ralf being in my mind one of the few editors who is attuned to what readers like, published it immediately. His common touch, reminds me of that wonderful editor Bruce Pascoe who edited Australian Short Stories through the nineteen eighties and nineties. Sadly now defunct. And I should like to add here with thumb firmly on end of nose and fingers extended like a cock’s comb that I have correspondence in my files from Amanda Lohrey and Nicholas Shakespeare who also thought it a humdinger