Short is the new long. So say new Manc publishers, Comma.

Comma editor Ra Page is angry about the state of the British short story. In fact he's angry about a lot of things - the huge advances given to authors ploughing a well-trodden furrow, the literary agents who are getting more and more of a stranglehold on the publishing business.

These are the things that pushed him to set up Comma, Manchester's first new fiction press in over a decade.

But don't talk about Comma as a Manchester Press - that makes Ra angry too. A previous collection of stories he brought out under the wing of mass publishers Penguin prompted reviews that were more about the city they were written in than the writing.

"I did get drawn into a lot of flag-waving for Manchester and that seemed to make its way into every review," he says. "Comma is NOT a 'Manchester Press for Manchester people', I don't want us to be pigeonholed like that. The moment you start marketing something as Mancunian you fall into the trap of cliche."

Comma is a national press that just happens to be based in Manchester. Its aim is to give the writers that major publishers should have given six figure advances to, but didn't, a break. The stories in Ra's first anthology have no connection, he says, except that they happen to be good.

"In the past, collections of short stories have been seen as scraps from the high table... they have often been to the detriment of writers because they are based on themes, and stories have been chosen for their subject, rather than because they are any good."

"In the 1930s to the 1950s there was a substantial readership for short stories. I'm not kidding myself that we're going to recreate that, but we're going to experiment." Ed Swinden 13 November 02

Read the short story The Girl With Leaves in Her Mouth.

useful link: www.commapress.co.uk