“Ethnographic fiction, and all fiction in general, depends on Kierkegaardian leaps of imaginative faith, which is not the same thing as an ‘anything goes’ world in which facts don’t matter.” JT Torres on variation and verisimilitude.
“Site Fidelity is a delight to read at the sentence and individual story scale, but it truly becomes a marvel when viewed as a collection.” Michael Welch reviews Claire Boyles’s debut story collection, out soon from W.W. Norton.
Alexander Weinstein and Garry Craig Powell discuss spirituality, vulnerability, and Weinstein’s latest collection, Universal Love.
“Manning and Som’s work don’t feel brave necessarily in subject matter—a well-established queer literature exists—but in their refusal to pander to their literary audience, to provide anything that looks like false intimacy.” Hasanthika Sirisena on our assumptions about interiority and representing queer experiences in short fiction.
Kent Kosack on retrospective narration in J.D. Salinger’s “De Daumier-Smith’s Blue Period.”
In this essay on Robert Stone’s final collection, Fun with Problems, Frank Freeman explores the writer’s mellower, sweeter—and funnier—side.
“You can’t change the past. You can reinvent it. Memory’s your accomplice in that. Memory is like water. Memory is imagination pointing backwards.” Mikhail Iossel talks with Ian Ross Singleton about his new story collection, Love Like Water, Love Like Fire.
“A thorough, imaginative investigation into the profound and sometimes undesirable ways we are shaped by family and place.” Josie Tolin reviews Carribean Fragoza’s debut collection, Eat the Mouth That Feeds You (City Lights Publishers).
“Writers often get obsessed with a story or character. I can just as easily get obsessed with making pom-poms. I love the feeling of being in the creative world of the project versus the actual world.” Colleen Hubbard talks with Maria Adelmann about her debut collection, Girls of a Certain Age.
Join us for our thirteenth-annual celebration of the short story, as we dedicate the month of May to short fiction.
