If this story were submitted to a MFA workshop, the results would be—forgive me—a hatchet job.

Angela Carter’s “The Fall River Axe Murders” breaks all the rules we learn in writing classes. Let us count its sins: The entire 17-page story takes place in the few seconds before the Borden family—as in Lizzie Borden—wakes up on that fateful August morning. And I mean seconds: just as the maid’s alarm clock ticks to six o’clock but before the alarm bell rings.  There is virtually no action; almost all of the story is scene-setting and character description. The writing is, in typical Carter style, wordy almost to the extreme (I had to look up “prolegomena”). A first-person narrator periodically intrudes on the third-person narrative, even announcing it will write one historical character, a visiting uncle, out of the story “for maximum emblematic effect.”

Worst of all, this is a story where we already know the ending: a second-grader can tell you that Lizzie Borden took an axe and gave her father forty whacks. Should no second-graders be handy, Carter provides the children’s rhyme right up front, as a grotesque epigraph to the story.

And yet. A workshop might call the story a hot mess, but it works. The tension is highest in that one moment before the carnage, and Carter exploits it. Every image reminds you that Lizzie’s world is overheated, literally stinking, and emotionally stultifying: the air “too thick for flies to move,” full of the “sudden stench of death from old butcher’s shops” and the “dandruff of spent whitewash flak[ing] from the ceiling where a fly drearily whines.” Carter sets up all the personalities, all the deep-rooted conflicts, like a pool player preparing for the break:

A house full of locked doors that open only into other rooms with other locked doors, for, upstairs and downstairs, all the rooms lead in and out of one another like a maze in a bad dream. [...] The girls stayed at home in their rooms, napping on their beds or repairing ripped hems or sewing loose buttons more securely or writing letters or contemplating acts of charity among the deserving poor or staring vacantly into space.

I can’t imagine what else they might do.

What the girls do when they are on their own is unimaginable to me.

Then, coolly, calmly, she builds the pressure. We never see the hatchet fall.  We don’t need to.

Further Links and Resources:

• Sample the first portion of the story at the London Review of Books (where it was originally published, under an earlier title) and register for free for full text; or, if you’re not intimidated by navigating a Chinese site, you can also read the complete story here.
• But I highly recommend you pick up Burning Your Boats: The Collected Stories of Angela Carter, because once you get a taste of Carter’s fabulously dark fiction you may not want to stop.
• Want more of FWR’s must-reads? Check out the (growing) archive of Stories We Love, and come back all month as we celebrate Short Story Month!

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Once upon a time in Seattle I lived with a lawyer, a librarian, an engineer, and a retailer. We threw dance-y parties and hosted champagne and apricot scone brunches. We read by the fireplace and played after dinner games of Settlers of Catan. And although we did not know one another prior to moving in together—we met the old-fashion way, on craigslist—we became close.

It started with the lawyer, and after a time the whole house was online dating. They, like many twenty-odds, were using OkCupid—“the Google of online dating.” Soon, our wholesome after dinner board games changed to after dinner rounds of judgment, rating the profiles of suggested OkCupid matches. I looked on, offering my opinions and occasionally helping to construct the perfectly casual-slash-witty private message. No, I didn’t have a profile of my own. I was, and still am, dating someone—we met the old, old-fashion way, at a party. For a time, for me, my housemates’ newfound dating technique was good voyeuristic fun. But eventually I went back to reading by the fireplace. They did not. They kept on. And now the engineer shares a mailing address with a fellow former OkCupider. Most dates, however, reportedly ended in one-off parking lot make-out sessions and polite farewells.

It’s no secret OkCupid’s algorithmic matchup model is not, and could never be, perfect. Mathematical expressions of how happy two people will be based on what they know and divulge about themselves are nothing more than predictions, predictions based on potential chemistry. But what if we based our love lives on actual chemistry, exchanging with one another an absolute version of OkCupid’s personal algorithm, a sort of mathematical analogue of who we are in chemical, biological, and psychological relation to someone else? What if we could express and exchange our full selves?

Science fiction guru Frederik Pohl’s cyberpunk romance “Day Million,” the title story of his 1970 collection, gives (bionic) legs to the matter. I was still living in Seattle when a former professor fixed me up with Pohl. In “Day Million” humans have biologically altered themselves into physically unrecognizable states. We see the “marriage” of a mermaidlike ladyish human (though DNA-wise she’s a he), Dora, to a starfarer cybernetic dude, Don. Their marriage, an exchange of simulation data—their mathematical analogues, as it were—is the only time they ever meet. Like saying goodnight after a parking lot make-out session, Dora and Don go their separate ways, never to see one another again. But, and this is where Pohl extends the excitement of parking lot lust, whenever Don wants the company of Dora, and visa versa, he hooks himself up to his symbol manipulator, and loads his partner’s data to “ball all night.”

“Not in the flesh, of course; but then his flesh has been extensively altered and it wouldn’t really be much fun. He doesn’t need the flesh for pleasure. Genital organs feel nothing. Neither do hands, nor breasts, nor lips; they are only receptors, accepting and transmitting impulses. It is the brain that feels, it is the interception of those impulses that makes agony or orgasm; and Don’s symbol manipulator gives him the analogue of cuddling, the analogue of kissing, the analogue of wildest, most ardent hours with the eternal, exquisite and incorruptible analogue of Dora. Or Diana. Or sweet Rose, or laughing Alicia; for to be sure, they have each of them exchanged analogues before, and will again.”

Pohl’s landscape of polyamorous dualism is both ideal and frightening. In a way, what we love most about people are the ways in which they know us. Identity hinges on who we are in the heads and hearts of others. But isn’t it also what people don’t know about us, what we may not even know about ourselves—those bioluminescent creatures pulsing in the deep end of the mind—that allows us to fall in and out of love with the same people and activities over and over again? Think of someone or something you love. Have you got it? When was the last time you learned something new about that person or activity? Now imagine never learning anything new about them or that thing again for the rest of your life. In love, like in fine literature, omission makes the heart grow fonder, or at least, interested.

Further Links and Resources:

• In this animated TED talk, OKCupid co-founder Christian Rudder discusses how the dating website does its algorithmic matching.

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Happy Short Story Month 2013! Once again, we’ll be celebrating short stories all month here at Fiction Writers Review:

• Reviews of fantastic story collections, such as Jamie Quatro’s debut I Want to Show You More, which is our lead feature for the month. We’re also excited to publish reviews of Ethan Rutherford’s The Peripatetic Coffin, Karen Russell’s Vampires in the Lemon Grove, and several others that we’ve been saving for Short Story Month.
• Interviews with established writers like Charles Yu, debut authors like Sarah Gerkensmeyer, whose collection What You Are Now Enjoying is currently longlisted for the Frank O’Connor International Story Award, and multi-genred, multi-talented writers like B.J. Hollars.



• The return of our “Stories We Love” blog series: writers on the stories that inspire them—and why.
• As well as contributions to our “Under the Influence” series, which highlights those writers who (directly or indirectly) have furthered our craft and careers.
• We’ll also introduce a new series for the blog: “Author Takes.” These posts are designed to give fiction writers the opportunity to muse on a literary topic of their choosing–the origins of a recent project, a shift in their work, a new way of thinking about teaching, or how the practice of, say, poetry affects their fiction, and so on. Like Glimmer Train’s Bulletins and the “Why I Write” series in Poets & Writers, we want to offer a space for reflection on the way fiction intersects with our personal, professional, and creative lives. We’ll inaugurate the series this month with a piece from Urban Waite entitled “The Unsaid Meaning of Writing: Don’t Write.”
• And, of course, we’ll have our Book of the Week giveaways highlighting short story collections.
• And more!

In our fifth year of celebrating May as Short Story Month, we’d like to once again recognize the astounding efforts of Dan Wickett, founder of the Emerging Writers Network and co-founder of Dzanc Books. On May 1 of 2007, Dan dubbed May “Short Story Month” as a way of championing the short form. Larry Dark (founder of the Story Prize) got on board soon after, and in 2009 (after less than a year in existence, having formed in fall of 2008) FWR joined too. We haven’t looked back!

So here’s to another great May full of short fiction. We hope you’ll join us regularly throughout the next few weeks, and that you’ll help us spread the word. Thank you!

Further Links and Resources:

• Here’s FWR’s first ever Short Story Month blog post, from Founding Editor Anne Stameshkin in 2009.
• Check out this 2011 guest blog post from Dan Wickett, talking about the origins of Short Story Month.
• You can also drop in on the Story Prize blog, as well as the Story Prize Website.
• Need some help getting started? Here’s some of our “Get Writing” prompts.
• Thanks again to Steven Seighman, who designs each year’s Short Story Month logo. Check out his cover art and book designs on his website.

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This week’s feature is A. Van Jordan’s new book of poetry, The Cineaste, which was just published by W.W. Norton. The book merges the form and content of an obsession, film, to produce poems tracking the inner lives of movie viewers, the career of early black filmmaker Oscar Micheaux, the story of the Leo Frank trial, and the disturbing racial history of the American film industry.

Jordan’s first book of poetry, Rise (Tia Chucha Press, 2001), tracks not only the history of African American music, but also the music of Jordan’s life growing up in Ohio. His second book, M-A-C-N-O-L-I-A (W.W. Norton, 2004) imagines the life of MacNolia Cox, who became the first black student to reach the final round of the National Spelling Bee. His third book, Quantum Lyrics (W.W. Norton, 2007), merges superhero comics, autobiography, and the philosophical principles of quantum physics. Jordan is the recipient of numerous literary accolades, including a Guggenheim Fellowship and a Whiting Writers Award. Jordan teaches at the University of Michigan, where he is a Professor of English and Creative Writing.

In her recent conversation with Jordan, Assistant Editor Leah Falk talks with the author about the origins of this recent book, his intentions for this new work, and what’s changed about the way we go to the movies. In response to a question about how the genre of film intersects with his work in The Cineaste, particularly with regards to form, Jordan says:

For me, when I’m thinking about how to render, how to manage information, how to structure something, the first place I’m gonna go to is form. Screenplay is probably one of the only writing arts that’s rarely published. We don’t study it in the same way, but it’s actually a very beautiful form. The issues we usually deal with inside of a poem or a story—they’ve worked all that out in their structure. When we think about transitions of time, transitions of place, the focus being on one character speaking to another, one voice shift, the voice inside someone’s head as opposed to the voice that’s more diegetic; all that’s worked out in the screenplay, and it’s all done through the formatting, so why not borrow that? The sonnet is a very flexible form, and of all the forms I can think of it’s probably the one that’s extended into the 21st century best. At the same time, there’s a certain limitation to it. You don’t want to spend the first sestet contextualizing, telling who’s speaking. So to get around that, I thought if we used the screenplay format, we could just go there. This time, this place, this person speaking.

We’re happy to announce that we’ll be giving away a copy of The Cineaste to three of our Twitter followers. To be eligible for this giveaway (and all future ones), simply click over to Twitter and “follow” us (@fictionwriters).

To all of you who are already fans, thank you!

Links and Resources:

• To read the rest of the interview between Falk and Jordan, please click here.
• Check our A. Van Jordan’s author page at W. W. Norton.
• Here’s a recent NPR feature for Poetry Month from last weekend called “Four Fantastic Books of Verse,” including The Cineaste.
• Read Jordan’s poem “One Week,” which is collected in The Cineaste and appears here on Poetry Daily.

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Last week’s feature was Urban Waite’s new novel The Carrion Birds, and we’re pleased to announce the winners:

Congrats! To claim your free copy, please email us at the following address:

winners [at] fictionwritersreview.com

If you’d like to be eligible for future giveaways, please visit our Twitter Page and “follow” us!

Thanks to all of you who are fans. We appreciate your support. Let us know your favorite new books out there!

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This week’s feature is Urban Waite’s new novel, The Carrion Birds, which was published last week by William Morrow. Urban Waite is the author of The Terror of Living, named one of Esquire’s Ten Best Books of 2011. His short fiction has appeared in the Best of the West 2009 anthology, the Southern Review, and other journals. He has degrees from the University of Washington, Western Washington University, and Emerson College. He lives in Seattle with his wife.

In 2011 we were pleased to feature Cam Terwilliger’s previous interview with Waite, which corresponded with the publication of The Terror of Living. And we’re equally pleased that these two writers were able to talk once again, this time about Waite’s most recent book, The Carrion Birds, in a new interview we published yesterday.

In their most recent conversation, they discuss the ways in which Waite’s style has developed, how his book projects are related, and the way in which landscape can function as a character. In response to a question about how his process may or may not have changed between books, Waite replies:

It hasn’t been the biggest change from the pre-debut to post-debut. But in general I do feel a bit more urgency in my life—urgency to keep this writing thing going, to wonder if I’m doing it right. I guess the best way to say it is that I’m much more aware that I have an audience in a way I didn’t before. When I was writing stories, or even Terror, I was mostly writing for myself. I guess I’m still doing that but now I have editors and agents that are asking me how things are going, or asking to see pages, and most importantly there are readers who contact me about my writing and see things in that writing that I’d never even thought of. So I guess I feel a responsibility to them. It’s stressful and at the same time it’s really nice and I take what people say seriously.

We’re happy to announce that we’ll be giving away a copy of The Carrion Birds to three of our Twitter followers. To be eligible for this giveaway (and all future ones), simply click over to Twitter and “follow” us (@fictionwriters).

To all of you who are already fans, thank you!

Links and Resources:

• To read the rest of the most recent interview between Waite and Terwilliger, please click here.
• You can also check out their 2011 conversation here.
• For more on Urban Waite’s work, or to check out upcoming author appearances, please visit the author’s Website.
• Here’s Urban Waite on Omnivoracious.
• Read Waite’s story “Open Water,” published by Agni online in 2007.

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Our most recent feature was Elizabeth Huergo’s debut novel The Death of Fidel Pérez, and we’re pleased to announce the winners:

Congrats! To claim your free copy, please email us at the following address:

winners [at] fictionwritersreview.com

If you’d like to be eligible for future giveaways, please visit our Twitter Page and “follow” us!

Thanks to all of you who are fans. We appreciate your support. Let us know your favorite new books out there!

Comment on this post »

Earlier this week, Granta released the results of its fourth “Best of British Novelists.” Of the 20 writers whose work is included in the most recent issue, 12 were women, which is an encouraging number after the most recent study by VIDA: Women in Literary Arts. Their annual survey, which was published in March, revealed that, by the numbers, not much has changed since last year; male writers still outnumber female writers at most major literary magazines as contributors, editors, reviewers, and review subjects.

Though Granta’s list would seem to contradict some of VIDA’s findings, NPR commentator Annalisa Quinn is critical of this apparent shift in demographic:

[Granta’s "Best of British Novelists" list] is not reflected by other publications: the recently released VIDA count, which tracks the gender balance of reviewers and authors in places such as the New York Times, Harper’s, and the Paris Review, shows that women are still strikingly under-represented in most major literary magazines. To claim, as Granta does, that the best voices naturally rise to the top seems to trivialize how many real barriers there are in the literary world for women and minorities.

Two years ago, after VIDA’s 2010 survey results were announced in February of 2011, then Blog Editor (now Editor-at-Large) Celeste Ng decided to put FWR’s gender disparity—or lack thereof—to the test.

She discovered that though it wasn’t a perfect 50/50 split, the disparity was much more even here on our site compared to many of the publications in VIDA’s report. In fact, in the categories of staff, overall contributors, interviewers, and reviewers, the scale was slightly tipped in favor of women. And though our percentage of reviews of books written by men was somewhat higher (56%), as was the percentage of interview subjects who were men (also, 56%), this is a fairly small discrepancy.

This year we decided to go back to the archive to see how we’re doing. For our most recent self-assessment, we tracked the previous 18 months of publishing history, dating back to October of 2011. Here are the (unscientifically tallied) results.

Staff:

In terms of staff, our numbers have skewed slightly in the favor of women as we’ve doubled our editorial positions (including Contributing Editors). In 2011 our staff was comprised of 5 men (45%) and six women (55%). Today, we’re close to a 3-to-5 ratio.

Male 8 (38%)
Female 13 (62%)

Reviews:

In the category of Reviews, our numbers were nearly identical to our last survey, in which 63% were written by women and 34% were written by men (note: numbers do not equal 100% due to the fact that several “discussion” reviews were conducted by multiple reviewers). And in terms of whose books we’re covering, the percentages have flipped to favor those written by women.

93 reviews published as of count date
37 (40%) by male contributors
56 (60%) by female contributors
40 (44%) were of books by male authors/editors
50 (55%) were of books by female authors/editors

Note: Total number of books reviewed does not add up because of several “Journal of the Week” posts.

Essays:

In the Essay category we saw a slight rise of female contributors over the past eighteen months, from 37% to 43%.

30 essays published as of count date
17 (57%) by male contributors
13 (43%) by female contributors

Interviews:

While in the Interview category, we found nearly unchanged numbers: 46% were published by male contributors while 58% were published by female contributors. Though in terms of subjects, our interviews were still skewed toward male authors—up two points from 56% in 2011.

57 interviews published as of count date
27 (47%) by male contributors
30 (53%) by female contributors
34 (58%) featured male subjects
24 (42%) featured female subjects

Note: Numbers do not total perfectly because of interviews with multiple interviewees.

Male interviewing male: 18 (31%)
Male interviewing female: 9 (15%)
Female interviewing female: 16 (28%)
Female interviewing male: 15 (26%)

Note: Numbers do not total perfectly because of interviews with multiple interviewees.

Overall, we’re glad to see that we’re still honoring the contributions of men and women in an equitable way. Each week, we strive to publish reviews of the best books, as well as interviews with and essays by the best writers writing today regardless of gender. That is our top priority.

But if Quinn at NPR is right, there is a consequence of invisibility in claiming that VIDA’s gender gap is closed. As was abundantly clear in the comments section in response to Deborah Copaken Kogan’s article “My So-Called ‘Post-Feminist’ Life in Arts and Letters,” which appeared in the April 29th issue of the Nation, and on the Nation’s website several days ago, this issue is far from over.

The FWR team and contributors

At FWR, we feel it is important to acknowledge not only the imbalance that exists in contemporary publishing, but also that despite how close an even distribution might seem, there is still work to do. We’ll continue to do our part.

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As a nation of readers in a changing media climate, we haven’t yet come to a consensus on what forces should govern the digital availability of information. The controversial and ambitious Google Book Search, in its original form, brought the objections of authors and librarians; acts of resistance to static copyright laws, such as Aaron Swartz’s download and release of millions of JSTOR articles, are met with serious sentences (Swartz hanged himself after the court ruling that would have sentenced him to 35 years in prison and fined him $1 million). But according to Robert Darnton, who’s championed the idea of a digital public library for all since at least 2010, today’s launch of the Digital Public Library of America will symbolize the marriage of two American approaches to information access, pragmatism and utopianism. (Read his New York Review of Books introduction to the site here, as well as his analysis of Google Book Search’s initial failures).

How exactly will the DPLA differ from Google’s database, or from the Library of Congress? For one thing, it will be free—Google’s proposition, rejected in court, was for libraries to pay for subscriptions to the digital versions of books that, in many cases, they had provided to be scanned. It will also be available to anyone with an Internet connection, regardless of institutional affiliation or lack thereof. Utopian. And searchable.

It also wants to make information available more quickly and transparently than our bureaucrats could. “We believed [the DPLA] required private initiative and that it would never get off the ground if we waited for the government to act,” Darnton writes. Pragmatic, indeed.

Privately-run print libraries have, of course, existed forever, and continue to exist today, often as nonprofits (take, for example, Poets House in Manhattan). But what does it mean for a digital “public” library of this scale to be managed privately, and outside of the jurisdiction of a university? Luckily, the committee that worked to make the DPLA a reality is nothing if not civic-minded—they think of their venture as a private-for-public offering. Executive Director Dan Cohen, formerly of the Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media at George Mason University, says:

We need a public option to balance out the gated resources that universities license at great expense and that increasingly eat up scarce library resources. I see the DPLA as a large open storehouse for classroom use and scholarly investigation, for inclusion in syllabi, articles, and books, and as a bridge between academia and the general public.

(Unsurprisingly, the title of Cohen’s recent book is Hacking the Academy.)

It’s for lack of that open-source philosophy, perhaps, that Google Book Search failed and Lawrence Lessig continues to shake his fist. A more democratic vision of digital information access—a return, some would say, to the philosophy of the early Internet—is certainly welcome. Open access just makes sense, Darnton and Cohen say, especially for academic publications—journal subscription prices have risen so high that a scholar’s work in an open-access journal is more likely to be read. But there are still questions about whether a large digital library would diminish support for local, brick-and-mortar public libraries. Is the DPLA potentially a case, like many cities’ reliance on charter schools, of a private project for the public good that risks leaving the original public institutions in disrepair?

Cohen doesn’t think so. He’d rather the DPLA be a “partner” to public institutions than a “replacement,” and wants to make that clear as the project launches. The DPLA can aid smaller libraries or libraries strapped for funds by supplementing their collections digitally, and for free; and libraries that partner with the DPLA can provide unique documents and titles in their collections to exponentially more patrons. So far, the institutions on board range from the Smithsonian to ARTstor to existing local and state digital libraries, many of which are already the fruits of public-private collaborations.

I can hear the members of the Authors’ Guild digging their fingernails into their kitchen tables, so let me also settle how the DPLA will affect authors. At first, it will operate much as a Print-on-Demand machine would—providing access to public-domain materials, then incorporating out-of-print books that are still under copyright. Eventually, the website says, it will “explore models for digital lending of in-copyright materials.” That may sound hairy, but it isn’t new; even your local library may have a version of digital lending, in which an e-book “times out” after you’ve had it for a certain period of time.

It’ll be a while before you can use the DPLA to access your favorite Alice Munro from an Internet café in Zambia. So what will the newly launched library contain in its first months? Among other things, sponsoring institution Harvard will provide “243 rare medieval manuscripts and 3,628 daguerreotypes, including the first photographs of the Moon.” The Founders, I dare say, would be proud.

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Hello again, FWR friends. Welcome to the latest installment of “First Looks,” which highlights soon-to-be (or just) released books that have piqued our interest as readers-who-write. We publish “First Looks” here on the FWR blog around the 15th of each month, and as always, we’d love to hear your comments and your recommendations of forthcoming titles. So please drop us a line with buzz-worthy titles you’re anticipating: editors(at)fictionwritersreview(dot)com. Thanks in advance!

Perhaps I’m biased because I teach Midwestern Lit courses and classes on Rust Belt Narratives, but Brian Kimberling’s debut novel, Snapper, which Pantheon is releasing next week, and which takes place in rural Indiana, is high on my soon-to-be-read list. Maybe not the most exotic locale to some, I’ll grant you. But as the son of an ornithologist, I’m intrigued by the bird-watching protagonist, Nathan Lochmueller, who “drives a glitter-festooned truck, the Gypsy Moth.” Fun fact for trivia night: cuckoos are the natural predators of gypsy moths, and their populations have co-evolved–when the population of one rises, the other falls, and vice-versa, in a classic predator-prey relationship. Second fun fact: roadrunners are also in the cuckoo family. Though I’m not sure what their relationship is with coyotes beyond antagonism… Anyway, count me in.

On a completely different note, Ben Percy’s new novel, Red Moon, will be published by Grand Central on May 7th. A literary, supernatural thriller, the book envisions an alternate universe in which Lyncanthropes, “from the Greek λυκάνθρωπος: λύκος, lykos, ‘wolf’, and ἄνθρωπος, anthrōpos, ‘man’” (thanks, wikipedia!), live in a negotiated peace alongside humans until an act of terror destabilizes that truce. John Irving calls it a “politically symbolic novel.” He goes on to say,”If George Orwell had imagined a future where the werewolf population had grown to the degree that they were colonized and drugged, this terrifying novel might be it.”

Comparisons will naturally be made between this book and Cronin’s vampire trilogy that began with The Passage, or between this and Colson Whitehead’s zombie book, Zone Out, simply because these literary authors have entered the domain of genre and that often makes critics as uncomfortable as watching a monster transform. But let’s dispense with this tired conversation about genre right off the bat and get to what matters: the writing. I can’t speak for the whole book yet, but I read the first sixty pages of this novel in one sitting. Hell, I forgot to sit down for the first twenty pages! I only realized I was still standing after I’d made it through the first few chapters. The pacing and undercurrent of dread reminds me of Dennis Lehane’s Mystic River. Another cross-over title, come to think of it. Maybe these authors are on to something.

And continuing our theme of there not being a theme here, Steven Kurutz’s profile of Jill McCorkle in the Times two weeks ago really made me look forward to reading the author’s newest novel, Life After Life, just out from Shannon Ravenel Books, an imprint of Algonquin. Ravenel is, of course, famous for editing New Stories from the South, which I though was one of the best annual anthologies of short fiction. Sadly, 2010 was the last edition. But if Ravenel’s taste in McCorkle’s work (whose stories regularly appeared in New Stories from the South) is as good as her taste in curating short fiction, which I expect it is, then I imagine this novel will be superb.

I also love those projects that unfold over the course of decades, like Denis Johnson’s reputed three-decade-long grappling with Tree of Smoke. McCorkle, apparently, worked on this project on and off for more than twenty years. As Kurutz recounts, “The novel was largely inspired by the death of Ms. McCorkle’s father from lung cancer, in 1992.” Yet what I was most struck by in the description of this book’s project was McCorkle noting what, in hindsight, might seems obvious if one stops to think about it, but which in fact is worth reminding ourselves about the aging process. She tells Kurutz: “We think people get to the end and stop living, stop thinking, stop doing. And yet they’re all experiencing life in the same ways they would have 40 years ago.”

Speaking of time passing, we’re in the midst of gearing up for our month-long celebration of short fiction. Each year we join Dzanc Books and several other literary partners in celebrating May as Short Story Month. We hope you’ll join us!

Links and Resources:

• Read Shawn Andrew Mitchell’s interview with Ben Percy on the release of his 2010 novel The Wilding.

For more on these authors and work, please visit their Websites:

• Brian Kimberling
• Benjamin Percy
• Jill McCorkle

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