Suspend Your Disbelief

Posts Tagged ‘short stories’

Shop Talk |

why the genius grants are, well, ingenious

by Celeste Ng

Yesterday the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation announced the 20 recipients for the 2009 Fellowships–popularly known as the “Genius” Grants. Each of the fellows learned in a single phone call that they will receive $500,000 with no strings attached. This year’s crop includes two fiction writers, novelist Edwidge Danticat and short story writer Deborah Eisenberg. Two things about this: First, the program’s stated mission is “to enable recipients to exercise their own creative instincts for the benefit of human society.” So as a fiction writer, I find it empowering that the MacArthur Foundation believes writers can benefit society […]


Shop Talk |

Ryan Adams and Mary-Louise Parker at the NYPL

by Anne Stameshkin

NYCers, head to the New York Public Library this Friday for an exciting LIVE from the NYPL/Askashic event: Singer-songwriter Ryan Adams will discuss his new book, a collection of short fiction and poems called Hello, Sunshine, with that Weedstastic actress of stage-and-screen, Mary-Louise Parker. The details: When: Friday, September 25, 2009, 6:00pm Where: Celeste Bartos Forum, Stephen A. Schwarzman Building (5th Avenue & 42nd St.) What it costs: $25 general admission; $15 library donors, seniors and students with valid identification. For more information, and to buy tickets, click here. Via Akashic’s website, here is Parker on Adams: “Ryan Adams writes […]


Shop Talk |

co-muse-ing: We Are the Friction

by Anne Stameshkin

Lee just sent me this link (from DesignSponge) about We Are the Friction, a new book featuring stories by twenty-four authors and illustrations by twenty-four artists. But this is no typical collection: its contributors were paired up specifically to inspire work from each other…to illustrate a writer’s story or put words to an artist’s illustration. This is the second book project from UK-based Sing Statistics‘ co-editors (and contributors) Jez Burrows and Lizzy Stewart, who describe We Are the Friction as “an erratic, eclectic collection of work that takes in space travel, Japanese deities, monster husbandry, and the Marx Brothers. We […]


Shop Talk |

In a world where fifteen minutes is a "commitment"…

by Anne Stameshkin

Please read that subject line in Dramatic Male Movie Preview Voice. Today, Bookfox synthesizes some insightful comments on Seth Fisher’s piece “More Crappy News for Short Story Writers” (on The Rumpus), addressing the whole “why don’t people read more short stories if they have less time?” question. Thoughts? Comments? Revolutionary notions? I plan to discuss this question in depth when I (finally) review Lauren Groff’s wonderful collection, Delicate Edible Birds, this fall, and I’d love to hear what others think about it. Does a short story require a more focused kind of attention than most readers are able to muster? […]


Shop Talk |

NPR's "Three-Minute Fiction" contest

by Anne Stameshkin

The flash-fiction / short-short-short trend continues… For Round II of this contest, NPR invites writers to submit an original work that begins with this sentence: “The nurse left work at five o’clock.” Instructions, via the site: One entry per person, and no more than 600 words, please. Stories must be received by 11:59 p.m. EDT on Tuesday, Aug. 25. We’ll post a favorite story weekly until the New Yorker‘s James Wood picks our winner and reads his or her story on the air. The winner will also receive a signed copy of Wood’s book, How Fiction Works. (And if you […]


Shop Talk |

Short Story Special

by Celeste Ng

The Guardian has put out its annual Short Story Special, featuring work by Dave Eggers, A.M. Homes, David Mitchell, William Boyd, and Julie Myerson. This year, the Special also includes six short stories written by Guardian readers, culled from a pool of almost 2,000 by judges William Boyd and Julie Myerson. The winning story, “Broken Crockery,” is the publishing debut (!) of Lisa Blower, who is studying creative writing at Bangor University. Here’s an excerpt: Mum says my nan’s in hospital with Margaret Thatcher. […] My nan doesn’t like Margaret Thatcher because she’d kicked women in the shins and blew […]


Shop Talk |

is short the new black?

by Celeste Ng

Flash fiction is rising in prominence both online and in print. (For an introduction to the form, see Sophie Powell’s review of The Field Guide to Flash Fiction.) Then came the six-word story trend. And now there’s 7×20, a Twitter-zine publishing short stories and fiction of 140 characters or less. In fact, 7×20 is just one of several Twitter-based short-story outlets. Mediabistro notes that such sites have been springing up everywhere. Some, like Nanoism, even pay. Here are four complete stories: She shows him her wedding ring and he just shrugs. I would be more interested in you if my […]


Shop Talk |

Symphony Space: Selected Shorts

by Celeste Ng

NY-based (or visiting) writers: More short story love, this time with actors: Symphony Space presents “Selected Shorts: A Celebration of the Short Story,” in which “spellbinding short stories by established and emerging writers take on a new life when they are performed by stars of the stage and screen.” Hosted by Isaiah Sheffer, performances often focus on a theme; for example, “Living Life to the Fullest” included Neil Patrick Harris reading “The Canoeists” by Rick Bass and Mia Dillon reading Pam Houston’s “How To Talk to Hunter.” And the series features plenty of stories by young/emerging writers, too, including Karen […]


Essays |

The Copernican Author: On Point of View, Ptolemaic Characters, and Useful Unknowing

by Michael Byers

Ptolemy was trying to describe a system that didn’t exist. His point of view, literally, was wrong. He wasn’t looking at the planets from a fixed center, but from a body that was itself circling the sun. Copernicus’ eventual understanding of this fact led swiftly to the discovery of several other beautiful truths, including those of Kepler, Brahe, and Newton – suggesting that where you stand has everything to do with what you can see. And that if you’re standing in the wrong place, or facing the wrong direction, you’re going to see a very strange, distorted view.

All of which is to say, point of view matters. It might be proposed that an author does well to be relatively Copernican, even if his characters start out almost entirely Ptolemaic. … The supreme example of a character remaining Ptolemaic within a Copernican story is Chekhov’s “Lady with the Pet Dog”. In this story, Chekhov knows nearly everything, and Anna knows, perhaps, only a little less – while the point of view character Gurov knows almost nothing of what goes on around him.




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