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.”
“‘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.”
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.”
“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.”
Kent Kosack on the complexities of motivation and action in Aimee Bender’s “Off.”
“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.
Join us for our fourteenth-annual celebration of the short story, as we dedicate the month of May to short fiction.
From the Archives: On our delayed discovery of Lucia Berlin and what we miss when we miss independent presses.
From the Archives: Brandon Bye on questions of influence, literary values, and more from Aleksandar Hemon’s 2012 visit to the Hopwood Room at the University of Michigan.
From the Archives: “Trusting the mind and imagination to work in concert as we explore the author/character vortex is no grave sin—provided that we let both mind and imagination do their jobs in peace…”
“Accurate identification of the fictional form is important to readers and authors. But it also makes life easier for book reviewers who walk a tightrope between several different constituencies—the author, the publisher, and the reading public.” Sharon Oard Warner on the pleasures and particulars of the novella.
“Maybe how we choose to tell the stories of our pain can allow us to turn that pain into something greater, something necessary, something that might ease the pain of others.” Karin Killian on narrative technique in Lauren Groff’s “The Wind.”
