Short straw for fiction at Radio 4

6,000 names on the petition and five tweets a week: the Society of Authors has launched its attack on Radio 4. BBC Controller Gwyneth Williams’ decision in June to reduce the BBC short story slots from three to one drove a cohort of objectors, including Ali Smith, Joanne Harris, Neil Gaiman and the SoA, to organise their campaign: the short story tweetathon. Every Wednesday, from 11am, a famous author will tweet out the first line of a very short story with four tweeters invited to complete the story in 670 characters. Last week, Ian Rankin sounded the starting pistol: “I woke up on the floor of a strange bedroom, clutching a single bullet in my right hand. I couldn’t see any sign of a gun.” Today, Sarah Waters takes charge; the minimum-opus will be delivered at 4pm.

AL Kennedy launched a passionate defense of the literary form a couple years ago in the Independent, asking us to:

‘Bear with me for a moment, because together we have to rediscover what the short story is really all about.