Stories We Love: “Eula,” by Deesha Philyaw
by Barrett Bowlin
Barrett Bowlin on Deesha Philyaw’s “Eula” as a sales pitch to students for “why it’s so good and important and essential to read short stories overall.”
Maybe you’re worried because you want your students to love this story as much...
I’m very aware of the nuance of how quickly queer history can change under your...
With 57 stories, I knew from the start that there was no such thing as the perfect...
Short stories are, for me, a place to experiment, to try new forms and explore new...
Barrett Bowlin on Deesha Philyaw’s “Eula” as a sales pitch to students for “why it’s so good and important and essential to read short stories overall.”
“I like writing characters who are in those vulnerable, intense moments, whether it’s at the end or the beginning of a new relationship, arrival in a new city, the beginning of sobriety, or on the eve of or just post a gender transition.” Emily Nagin talks with Lydia Conklin about their debut collection, Rainbow Rainbow.
Benjamin Woodard and Michelle Ross talk microfiction vs. short stories, how to organize a book of 57 stories, and Ross’s new collection, They Kept Running, out now from the University of North Texas Press.
“Re-reading this story now, after the terrible years of Covid, in the shadow of the ghastly war in Ukraine, as famine stalks Africa and the Middle East, one understands the dream of escape.” Lee Thomas on Tamas Dobozy’s story “The Restoration of the Villa Where Tibor Kálmán Once Lived.”
Shann Ray and Jess Walter discuss Walter’s latest collection, The Angel of Rome, out next month from Harper.
Taking cues from everyone from Don DeLillo and Toni Morrison to Roland Barthes and Carmen Maria Machado, Ayşe Papatya Bucak questions a key principle of conventional craft wisdom.
Kent Kosack on the complexities of motivation and action in Aimee Bender’s “Off.”
“Wang’s understated wit and distinctive tone is undeniable, conjuring up connections to Kafka’s logic-riddled restraint, Camus’s detachment, and Lu Xun’s dark humor.”
Danielle LaVaque-Manty and Holly Goddard Jones sit down to talk about fabulism vs. realism, teaching and learning from students, and Jones’s new collection, Antipodes.
“In Schwartz’s fiction, as in life, it is often the unspoken or withheld that holds power”: Ellen Prentiss Campbell on the story “Stranger,” by Steven Schwartz, from his collection Madagascar.
