Louise Erdrich and Barbara Kingsolver, Amy Tan and Elizabeth Strout: these are some of the writers whose stories about parenting, and being parented, stand out in my mind. Claudia Dey’s fiction could be included here, too, although her stories spiral around alienation and abandonment—the ways in which those who
On the longlist, I’d read just four of the books when the nominees were announced, two last year and two this year. For those who can forgive short stories for not being novels, Lisa Alward's Cocktail will satisfy on many levels. She’s got the sharp observations of writers like
Last year I read 11 of the longlisted titles for The Carol Shields Prize for Fiction and with the recent announcement of the 2024 longlist I was prompted to reflect on 2023’s selections. Three of the short story collections I’ve already written about—Talia Laksmni Kolluri’s What We Fed to
Just a few pages into Jessica J. Lee’s Dispersals, I was wholly hooked (the mention of “belonging” in the subtitle got me part way there). One of those reading experiences where you feel as though you are connecting not-so-much with a book but with a way of seeing, a
Showcasing these during the #ReadIndies event, hosted by Kaggsy and Lizzy, is ideal: the compilations themselves embody the value of indie presses, but they also draw from the best work published by other small, independent publishers—journals and magazines. In the back of each of these volumes is a list
