A common suggestion in recent books of prompts and story ideas for writers is to spend time in an airport; in 1968, when Alice Munro's first story collection was published, the suggestion would have been to hang out in a train station. Random House, 2012 Trains make arrivals
Towards the end of 2012, I was overwhelmed by the idea of being just one indie-minded reader in a literary world dominated by mega-publishers and mega-retailers, unsure how to affect change, how to respond to the sense of despair swelling within my reading heart and mind. I decided that making
Immediately I like Corrie. When Howard Ritchie comes to dinner, he has some reservations about her. But I liked her. Random House, 2012 "She seemed both bold and childish. At first, a man might be intrigued by her, but then her forwardness, her self-satisfaction, if that was what
Whether the tale is one of mere survival or something greater, a life in Alice Munro's hands can unfurl in a book-length collection (as does Del's life in Lives of Girls and Women and as does Rose's life in Who Do You Think You Are?) or in a handful of
In the introduction to her Selected Stories, Mary Lavin wrote in 1981 of the process she used to choose the stories to be included. One from each of her eleven short story collections, she explains. Hoping that "readers would not be presented with a bookful of stories with which they
