“Before I was a writer, I always wanted to be Elvis Presley.”
Reading Alistair MacLeod, from the Beginning
“I just wish he’d write more.” (David Adams Richards) “I think if you’re Irish and maybe it coves all the world…but if you’re irish certainly the stories give you a great shock.” (Colm Toibin) He has all “the tenderness and the brutality together”. (Lisa Moore) “I think those stories are as good as anything that has ever been written.” (Alexander MacLeod, ok, yeah, he’s his son, but he’s not the only person with this opinion).
Week by week, Story by story: Alistair MacLeod (16 stories, 2021-2022) Mavis Gallant (123 short stories, 2017-2020) and Alice Munro (147 short stories, 2011-2015). Who’s next?
From websites to prizelists, from “staff picks” to magazines: where do you find short stories to read?.
Allowing too much time to pass without reading a short story is like leaving too much time between desserts: eventually I must have one.
Recent Bookchat
About Short-fiction pages that I’ve been turning
(For recent bookchat across all categories, visit Home)
Quarterly Stories, Summer 2026
My experiment with reading-stories-in-sevens continues. This group of seven, pictured alongside, includes fiction by Liliana Colanzi, Anne Enright, Mary Gaitskill, Catherine Lacey, Weike Wang, and Paul Yoon (and whoever is in that
Changing Habits, Changing Seasons: #LoveYourLibrary
The past couple of years I have enjoyed paying more attention to how the seasons change and how my own habits change accordingly—including reading habits, which absorb a significant amount of time
Joyce Carol Oates: Her Debut (But Not, Yet, a Novel)
In a sparsely furnished cosy (i.e. small) apartment at the age of eighteen, working multiple jobs and having little energy or money to do much in my off-hours (and no television), going
Quarterly Stories: Spring 2026
This year I’m focusing on anthologies and stories in magazines. Partly because I have eleventy-billion issues of The New Yorker around here that I’ve only partially read; partly because I always say
Changing Seasons and the Borrowing Days
I was reading Walter Scott’s The Heart of Midlothian (1818) as the borrowing days approached—days at the end of March, thought to have been borrowed from April so that winter could last
On Spending Time with Lonely Characters in Dorothy Edwards’ Fiction #ReadingWales
On the 18th of August, 1903, Dorothy Edwards was born in the mining community of Ogmore Vale in southern Wales, to Edward and Vida, who met when he was a headmaster and
Remembrance Reading 2025 (Part 2 of 2)
Continuing yesterday’s talk of remembrance reading, while I reflect on other reading from 2025 and possibilities for reading this year. The first of his books published in his
Quarterly Stories, Winter 2025
Ipellie, Lindberg, and Saona Short Stories in October, November and December Whether in a dedicated collection or a magazine, short stories captureand create a variety of reading moods. This