We’re Flying, by Peter Stamm
by Shawn Andrew Mitchell
Peter Stamm’s collected stories in translation contain brutal—and beautiful—truths.
Peter Stamm’s collected stories in translation contain brutal—and beautiful—truths.
In her pithy introduction to the recent Granta Book of the Irish Short Story, Anne Enright waltzes around the question that all anthology editors seem obligated to address: what makes a short story a short story? And, in the case of this anthology, what makes the Irish short story exceptional? Enright considers, rejects, and modifies many possibilities. She draws on that old master of the form, Frank O’Connor: the story is dictated by its needs alone; the story is always about human loneliness; the story thrives among “submerged population groups.” She quotes Sean Ó Faoláin’s demand that a story be […]
Graywolf published Benjamin Percy’s much-anticipated debut novel The Wilding earlier this week. Shawn Mitchell talks with the acclaimed story writer about making the transition between the short and long forms, his apprenticeship to the craft of story, the obsessions that drive his work, and how he manages to balance his fiction and family life with teaching, traveling on assignment for magazines like Outside and The Wall Street Journal, and contributing regularly to publications like Esquire, Men’s Journal, and Poets & Writers.
