Editor’s note: What? Isn’t Short Story Month over? Yes, it is—but that doesn’t mean we stop loving short stories. So here’s an encore round of “Stories We Love.”
In “Map of the City,” a story from her new collection Separate Kingdoms, Valerie Laken portrays the life of an American college student in perostroika-era [...]
Is SSM really almost over?!
Thankfully we can read stories year round, but I still feel the urge (while they’re center stage) to list two recommendations this week. They both come from Narrative magazine, which does require (free) registration. But I promise, these stories are so good, it’s worth filling out a quick form to read [...]
When I first read William Faulkner, in high school, it felt less like reading a book and more like an archeological find—unearthing something long dormant that I’d always known. His cadence, and that humid, repetitious, biblical world of the South, tapped into something in my bones.
The first time I read David Foster Wallace’s “Incarnations [...]
For the last weekend of Fiction Writers Review’s Short Story Month celebration, here’s one more helping of short-story-related news (and some gratuitous shorts-related photos—you know you enjoy them):
READ:
Ninth Letter shares a story by Rachel Cantor, “Zanzibar, Bereft,” to read online.
At The Millions, Paul Vidich reflects on the livelihood of the short story: “Is today’s short [...]
Pioneer High School students Carlina Duan and Allison Kennedy sit down with famed Ann Arbor writing teacher and teen center director Jeff Kass to discuss his recent story collection, Knuckleheads. Kass discusses knuckleheadedness as a state of being, why being an outsider is important, the influence of Springsteen on his fiction, and the reason he wrote this book—in part—for his students. Bonus Track: an original off-the-top-of-the-dome list poem by Kass on “happiness.”
Editor’s note: As part of our ongoing Short Story Month Celebration, we are delighted to present the following guest post by Stacie M. Williams of Boswell Book Company.
A fellow bookseller, when inclined to discuss my fiction reading habits, described my taste simply and accurately as “dark and twisty.” This, fortunately or unfortunately, is all [...]
Jess Row’s second collection of stories, Nobody Ever Gets Lost, is an examination of some of our most intense impulses, and the debates, quandaries, and mysteries in these seven stories will stay with you. Charlotte Boulay talks to Jess Row about the intersection between compassion and extremism.
I’ve fought close to a dozen fights.
I’ve fought my brother, two best friends, five or so drunks in college, and a few New Years Eves ago, a group of six with one Australian and two Samoans at my side. It was the broad-shouldered Australian who began things by tapping my shoulder and informing me, [...]
I love perspective shifts. The British mini-series “Collision” does this with a giant car accident on the A12 highway outside London. I’m just now embroiled in Colum McCann’s gorgeous Let the Great World Spin, which also refracts one moment in history through multiple lenses.
One place that always takes perspectivism in unanticipated, fresh directions: poetry. [...]
Flaubert, best known for his part in fathering the modern novel, also wrote wonderful short fiction. This Saturday morning, I recommend curling up with “A Simple Heart.” A tribute to George Sand, this story was first published in 1877 as part of Flaubert’s final finished work, Three Tales; almost 100 years later it inspired [...]
