Five Ways to Celebrate Short Stories

Here at FWR, we’re certainly doing our collective best to honor the art and craft of the short story this month. But there are lots of ways that each fiction writer can celebrate short stories individually. Here are five possibilities:

1. Participate in #StorySunday: Reminded each Sunday by @TaniaHershman, short-story fans are encouraged to share a link via Twitter to someone else’s short story using the hashtag #StorySunday. Quick. Painless. Free. Click here to see the latest #StorySunday tweets.
2. Listen to Selected Shorts: As its brand-new website explains, Selected Shorts “is a weekly public radio show broadcast on over 130 stations to about 300,000 listeners”—and it features short stories. “There is a theme to each Selected Shorts episode and performance. Several stories are presented around each theme. The stories are always fiction, sometimes classic, sometimes new, always performed by great actors from stage, screen and television who bring these short stories to life.” I like to listen to the radio broadcasts whenever possible, but you can also subscribe to the podcasts.
3. For book clubs: Why not recommend a story collection for an upcoming meeting? Want some suggestions? Check out FWR’s coverage of debut story collections (debut collections, in particular, can use all the book-club love they can get).
4. Subscribe to a journal: Make your next journal subscription one to a journal that focuses on the short story. Some suggestions: American Short Fiction, One Story, and Zoetrope. (Cash-strapped? Online journals dedicated to providing complimentary short-story content include Five Chapters and Storyglossia.)
5. Keep the celebration going: Mark your calendars for National Short Story Week in the U.K. (November 7-13, 2011). Sure, the bookstore and other place-based events will be hard for those of us in North America to attend, but we can all take part in the week’s stated aims of “getting more people writing, reading and listening to short stories.”

Other ideas? Please share your thoughts with us and add to this list!