Stories We Love: “The Bees,” by Dan Chaon
by Shawn Andrew Mitchell
“‘The Bees’ is one hundred percent, additive-free parental nightmare fuel, from the inexplicable screams to the accidental and intentional harms to the final body bags.”
Shawn Andrew Mitchell’s stories, essays, reviews, and interviews have been published in Poets & Writers, Fairy Tale Review, The Rumpus, The Montreal Review, Glimmer Train’s Writers Ask, and elsewhere, as well as in the anthologies Hair Lit Volume One and Torpedo’s Greatest Hits. He received his MFA from Southern Illinois University Carbondale.
“‘The Bees’ is one hundred percent, additive-free parental nightmare fuel, from the inexplicable screams to the accidental and intentional harms to the final body bags.”
From the Archives: In part two of Shawn Andrew Mitchell’s interview with Charles Yu, the two writers continue their conversation.
From the Archives: Shawn Andrew Mitchell beams in from the future of a quiet Sunday morning in South Korea to chat with Charles Yu on a quiet Saturday evening in Los Angeles.
Shawn Andrew Mitchell on Gifts of Love, Meaning, and Craft in Aimee Bender’s “The Red Ribbon.”
“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.”
“The Municipalists was a way for me to dig deeper into the idea of cities in general, both to explore the ways in which they can be great and to come to a better understanding of how they need to change:” Seth Fried talks with Shawn Andrew Mitchell about his debut novel, ‘lightness’ as a revision strategy, idea generation tips, and more.
“Each story presents the embodiment of a different performer, and each presents a concept you could spin into a metaphor for something about contemporary American life.” Shawn Andrew Mitchell reviews Mark Meyer’s debut story collection, Aerialists, out now from Bloomsbury.
From the Archives: “I can only write if I have stolen something valuable that day”: Shawn Andrew Mitchell asks Jesse Ball about lies, dreams, and his novel Silence Once Begun.
From the Archives: The title of Jim Shepard’s 2011 collection, You Think That’s Bad, could also be a creative mantra. Here the veteran writer discusses his research process, the apocalyptic state of the world, the (possible) irrelevancy of literature to the apocalypse, his epic mustache—and other matters of importance.
Percy has turned himself into a cross-medium, cross-genre success whose unabashed embrace of work outside the narrow confines of literary fiction is opening up new opportunities and allowing him to have a hell of a good time.
