This brilliant project was developed by Australian artist Barbara Campbell. Each sunset for 1001 nights, from 21 June 2005 to 17 March 2008, she performed a new story, streamed live into the ether. The stories were written by writers across the world. Each sunrise, Campbell would send a single prompt to a single writer, who would have a few hours to create a story that could not exceed 1001 words. The prompts were lifted from daily newspaper stories about events in the Middle East. If you read the very first story, performed in Paris shortly before 10pm, you will discover the tragedy at the root of this extraordinary project.

I learned a lot while writing for this, and was astonished by the results that were produced from simple prompts and a ticking clock. I was also lucky to encounter a number of writers I have come to admire deeply, including, among many others, Tony White.

Available online here. Originally read live as the 1001^st story for Campbell’s durational performance, 1001 nights cast. All of the stories are available online here. If you open the Index of story writers, you can see which stories they wrote and you simply need to key in the number of each story at the end of the URL, for example https://1001.net.au/story/1001/