Short story vending machines

Paste Magazine features Bryan Talbot and Mary M. Talbot’s latest graphic novel Rain, which

chronicles the budding relationship between two young women, one an environmental activist, set against the disastrous 2015 floods in northern England. The local wild Brontë moorlands are being criminally mismanaged, crops are being poisoned and birds and animals are being slaughtered. The characters may be fictional, but the tragedies are shockingly real. (Steve Foxe)

The Logical Indian tells about short story vending machines in the UK but is a bit despairing of new readers.

How many of us have not obsessed over Elizabeth Bennett and Mr. Darcy? All of us have deeply admired Scarlett O’Hara and Rhett Butler. Sherlock Holmes has become a household name. David Copperfield and Oliver Twist have won our hearts.
However, although literature lovers will be able to relate to these, not everyone will appreciate the brilliance with which these plots were written. This is because experts believe that thousands of people of this generation do not read. Let alone browse fat books like David Copperfield, Wuthering Heights or Gone With The Wind, scores of youths do not even have the patience to read the short stories that have been immortalised by so many brilliant authors. Social media keeps this generation hooked to the internet all the time. (Sumanti Sen)

Coincidentally, LincolnshireLive is holding a (very) short story contest around a Victorian Age theme.

Writers are being set the challenge of composing an ultra-short story of just 50 words on the theme of Victoria with a chance to win a prize.
The flash fiction competition is part of the Lincoln Book Festival, which returns in September with a week-long series of literary events celebrating the bicentenary of the birth of Queen Victoria and the era she defined.
Competition judges will be looking for short stories inspired by Queen Victoria, Victorian literature, history or culture, or ‘Victoriana’ - with writers free to interpret the brief as broadly as they wish.
Each story will be considered on how it reflects the theme through its creativity, style, structure, plot, characters, dialogue or sense of location.
Writers might choose to take inspiration from great literature of the age like a Dickens drama or a Brontë romance.
Genres inspired by or emerging from ‘Victoriana’, such as Jules Verne-style adventures and early sci-fi forays, might also offer authors a spark of creativity.
Alternatively, writers may choose to use real historical events; for example, with fictionalised accounts of key moments or issues that shaped Victoria’s reign. (Dawn Hinsley)

Fans of Game of Thrones - beware of possible SPOILERS ahead. Hypable likens a couple from the show to other legendary couples:

Hamlet and Laertes. Heathcliff and Linton. Daenerys and Sansa.
These are all examples of literary foils, individuals who play off each others’ strengths and weaknesses to demonstrate striking, and important, differences. While Hamlet cannot decide how to avenge his father, Laertes takes immediate action. Where Linton is a coiffed and quaffed gentleman, Heathcliff is the equivalent of a savage. When Daenerys falls apart without love, Sansa has learned to live without it. (Olivia Friedman)

It's Museum Week and on Twitter the Brontë Parsonage Museum posts about the theme of 'Secrets'.