For me the short story is family. I didn’t choose it; it chose me.
The parents in all of these stories are Chekhov’s gun on the wall.
“I love ‘The Great Silence’ because it is the odd bird out, or, to double down and use another cliché, the canary in the literary coal mine of the collection that warns us that we might all be doomed if we don’t listen.”
“A linked collection has the luxury of telling a story that doesn’t quite hold together or go anywhere.” Marjorie Celona interviews Jason Brown, whose linked collection, A Faithful but Melancholy Account of Several Barbarities Lately Committed, is out now from Missouri Review Books.
Part II of Peter Turchi’s essay on shifting narrative distance in third person fiction continues with an examination of the techniques used by Jenny Erpenbeck in her novel Go, Went, Gone and Adam Johnson in his story “Hurricanes Anonymous.”
“There is nearly always a difference between the story the narrator understands and wants to tell, and the story the character would tell. That’s why the story is in the third person.” Part I of Peter Turchi’s essay on shifting narrative distance in third person fiction.
“I love when a writer asks me to forgive a parent despite the pain they’ve caused their child”: Amber Wheeler Bacon on empathizing with bad parents in fiction.
Sofie Verraest talks with Lydia Davis about her new book, Essays One, as well as the difference between writing essays and stories, the role of “coherence” in each genre, the climate crisis and the role of writers, and more.
“It’s as if I hadn’t really read the work until I wrote the essay.” Benjamin Woodard interviews Douglas Glover about the art of the craft essay and his recent collection of them, The Erotics of Restraint, out now from Biblioasis.
“After all, when there are few places to physically go in a story, every movement counts.” Alyson Mosquera Dutemple inhabits the limited settings of John Updike’s “A&P” and Stewart O’Nan’s Last Night at the Lobster.
In commemoration of the recent death of a brilliant experimental fictionist, we revisit this 2009 meditation by Steven Wingate on the words of his mentor Steve Katz.
“I don’t believe that you can totally shed your old self (sorry, family from my first novel), but neither do I believe that identity is perfectly portable”: Bryan Furuness talks with Philip Graham about his new novel, Do Not Go On, books that are “suspenseful and insightful,” and more.
Surprising Things Can Happen: An Interview with Kristen Roupenian
Part of a Bigger Conversation: An Interview with Rebecca Makkai
If You See Me, Don’t Say Hi: An Interview with Neel Patel
Sometimes Taking Things Out Counts as Writing: an Interview with Celeste Ng
Influences: An Interview with Tobias Wolff
Stories We Love: “Blue Lenses,” by Daphne Du Maurier
Stories We Love: “White Angel,” by Michael Cunningham
Stories We Love: Donald Barthelme’s “The School,” In Which is Revealed the Meaning of Life
Stories We Love: "A Small, Good Thing" by Raymond Carver
Stories We Love: "The Fall River Axe Murders," by Angela Carter
