January 5th – Krampus Cracker launch event photos.
Thanks to Fiona Gell from Leeds Big Bookend, and Carolyn Pritchard, for sharing their pictures of the event. 🙂
Madeleine McDonald kicking us off with the wonderful ‘Advice from the Heart’
Amanda Mason reads ‘A Bag of Cinders’ to an enthralled audience.
Samantha Braham shows off a Krampus cracker with her flash fiction, ‘Sweet Krampusnacht’ inside it.
Charlotte Huggins reads the slightly disturbing ‘Blue Lungs’.
Nick Clark, author of ‘The Yule Ghoul’, with a selection of Krampus crackers.
June Taylor reads ‘When Krampus Comes’.
Rob Burton takes a philosophical point of view in ‘The Bad Brother’.
Veronique Kootstra reads ‘Until Next Christmas’.
Sarah Peploe brings the evening to an appropriately creepy finish with ‘Snowball’.
Krampus flash fiction judge Steve Toase looks appropriately frightened.
Krampus project curator and judge, Vicky Pointing, and Krampus elf, June Taylor, share a cracker.
December 5th – Merry Krampusnacht to you all!
Well, the UK Krampus crackers launch took place at Outlaws Yacht Club last night and it was fantastic! Big thanks to all the highly talented Krampus authors, the wonderful audience, and all the Krampus elves for making it such a great event. 🙂
Photos will follow soon…
In the meantime, Merry Krampusnacht.
December 2nd – Krampus Crackers News!
Click to view!
The State of The Arts article about the crackers – including author bios and first lines
Big Bookend articles about the crackers and the launch event. News item. Main article.
Liars League event in London (some of the Krampus cracker stories are going to be read out at this event. Watch this space for more details)
November 24th
Launch event confirmed!
The Krampus crackers are going to be unleashed on the public very soon, but they’ll be available first on Thursday the 4th of December at Outlaws Yacht Club (click here to find out more about our venue).
The UK Krampus Crackers launch event will start at 7pm on Thursday the 4th of December.
9 of our 12 Krampus authors will be there to read their stories aloud. So if you’d like to listen to a range of funny, silly, frightening, and disturbing tales about the anti-St Nick, then please do come along!
To confirm your attendance at this free event, please book a ticket through Event Brite (see link below). There is no charge for the ticket and you’ll be able to take home a free cracker or two. Light refreshments will also be provided.
We’ll see you there!
Click here to save a spot at this event.
September 27th
UK Krampus cracker venues!
Watch this space – this list will be increasing over the next few weeks. 🙂
Mrs Atha’s, Leeds
Outlaws Yacht Club, Leeds
Heaven, Leeds
Friends of Ham, Leeds.
Leeds North Bar.
A new addition: Sandinista, Leeds.
September 21st
KRAMPUS CHAMPIONS!
I’m very happy to announce that Steve Toase and I have chosen the twelve authors whose fantastic flash fiction will be part of the UK Krampus crackers project!
Steve and I were extremely impressed with the quality of entries we received, all of which were judged anonymously. The standard was very high, which made it extremely difficult for us to choose only twelve stories to publish. We’d very much like to thank everyone for getting involved and for sending us their writing, which we really enjoyed reading.
In no particular order, these are our winners. Please see below for further details of each author.
Christmas Wishes by Kelda Crich
Sweet Krampusnacht by Samantha Braham
Expectations by Josh Turner
Advice from the Heart by Madeleine McDonald
Blue Lungs by Charlotte Huggins
The Yule Ghoul by Nick Clark
When Krampus Comes by June Taylor
Snowball by Sarah Peploe
A Bag of Cinders by Amanda Mason
Until Next Christmas by Veronique Kootstra
The Bad Brother by Rob Burton
Letter to Krampus by Alan Graham
Kelda Crich
Kelda Crich is a new born entity. She’s been lurking in her creator’s mind for a few years. Now she’s out in the open. Find her in London looking at strange things in medical museums or on her blog.
http://keldacrichblog.blogspot.co.uk/ Kelda’s work has appeared in the
Lovecraft E-zine, Journal of Unlikely Acceptances, The Mad Scientist Journal and in the
Bram Stoker Award winning
After Death anthology.
Samantha Braham
Josh Turner
Josh is a writer based in Edinburgh with a love of writing fiction. He likes strange worlds and weird dreams that make it from your imagination and onto the page. He also likes coffee and cake and frequently uses them to fuel his literary delusions. @Josh_turner13
http://alifeofwordsandcoffee.wordpress.com/
Madeleine McDonald
Madeleine lives on the Yorkshire coast, where the wind whistles up through the floorboards. She finds inspiration walking on the beach before the world wakes up.
Charlotte Huggins
Charlotte is a psychology graduate with too much spare time lately. She’s 21, but has embraced drinking wine and complaining like an old woman.
Nick Clark
N G F Clark is an English and History graduate from deepest, darkest Yorkshire. He reads and writes speculative fiction. Look for his sign: @ngfclark
June Taylor
June is a writer from Leeds who can only make sense of the world by making up stories and looking at things sideways. Or upside-down. Tweets @joonLT
Sarah Peploe
Sarah loves glühwein, mixed nuts, genuinely rancorous karaoke renditions of I Believe in Father Christmas, writing and drawing. She lives in York. Tweets @peplovna
Amanda Mason
Amanda lives in York. She’s had short stories published in collections produced by Cracked Eye, The Fiction Desk, and Gumbo Press. Tweets @amandajanemason
Veronique Kootstra
Rob Burton
Rob Burton isn’t the Robert Burton who wrote The Anatomy of Melancholy in 1621. He only once stole Christmas, but people won’t let it go. @RobertSBurton
Alan Graham
Alan studied “Creative Writing” and “Economics” at UEA and is still unsure which discipline relies on make-believe the most. He currently lives and works in London. Tweets @Trubshawe1
September 6th
Submissions are now closed!
Sorry everyone but your time’s up. Submissions have now closed for this project. Check back soon to find out who the twelve selected authors are and where you can find their crackers. 🙂
August 2nd 2014
It might be too early to think about Christmas but I have a little present for you.
Go on, unwrap it.
There you go.
It’s a flash fiction project inspired by the myth of Krampus, a Christmas beast who punishes wicked children.
The wonderful Tiny Owl Workshop have decided we should get flash fiction in our Christmas crackers instead of jokes. So they’re inviting you to forget about decking the tree or snoozing in front of the Queen’s speech with a full belly. Instead, they’d like you to consider the horned and fanged anti-St Nicholas who rattles his chains and wields sticks of birch, seeking out naughty children.
Tiny Owl workshop are looking for twelve stories, which will be illustrated by artists including
Terry Whidborne,
Simon Cottee,
Kathleen Jennings, and
Gustavo Ortegar, and made into sets of ‘Krampus Crackers’. These will be distributed throughout Leeds for Krampusnacht (December the 6th), and there will also be a reading by the authors.
So if you live in the UK, why not send us a story?
DETAILS
- A Christmas theme is essential, but the Krampus influence can be more interpretative. It could be as literal as telling a story with Krampus as a character, or playing with the polarities Christmas presents—reward vs. punishment, morality vs. debauchery, reality vs. fantasy, and so on.
- Format: flash fiction (300-500 words).
- Stories accepted for inclusion by Tiny Owl will be paid $60 (AUD).
- Finished stories must be submitted via email to Tiny Owl at tinyowlworkshop@gmail.com, as a Microsoft Word document or in the body of the email. The author’s name must not appear anywhere on the Word document.
- In the body of the email, please include your name and contact details, the title of your submission, and a flash bio (25 words).
- Stories that have already been published are not eligible for consideration.
- Authors retain copyright of their stories.
DEADLINE
JUDGES
Steve Toase is an author and archaeologist living in North Yorkshire and occasionally Munich, Germany. As an author he writes mythic fiction, weaving elements from folklore and legend into a contemporary setting. In Steve’s work Gods are found in boxes, trees hitch-hike and bears play chess in sunlit plazas. His story Call Out has recently been selected for the Best Horror Of The Year Anthology 6. To read more of Steve’s work please visit stevetoase.co.uk Facebook
www.facebook.com/stevetoase1 Twitter @stevetoase
Vicky Pointing is a Leeds-based writer. She is currently studying for an MA in Creative Writing at Sheffield Hallam University, and her flash fiction ‘Neighbourhood Witch’ was printed as part of Tiny Owl’s Halloween themed Napkin project in October 2013. Vicky was on the board of the 2014 Leeds Big Bookend literature festival, where she played a major part in organising the children’s and young adult’s programmes. She writes flash fiction and for children. Her work is fantastical, frightening, and often silly.
Inspiration
Please click to view. Krampus UK flyer
August 18th 2014
Illustration sneak peaks! You can see each image in its entirety on the finished Krampus flash fictions in December.
copyright Simon Cottee 2014
copyright Terry Whidborne 2014
What Vicky Did Next 
Really excited to be part of this project x
Thanks, we’re very happy to have you! 🙂