Abi-Nakhoul, Atwood, Brinkley, Graves, Kemick, Nunez, Segal Short Stories in October, November and December Whether in a dedicated collection or a magazine, these stories capture a variety of reading moods. This quarter, I returned to three familiar writers and also explored four new-to-me story writers.
When I started reading some of the stories in Dancing Girls for MARM in 2021, I was between short story projects and the idea of focussing on some single stories appealed. When Old Babes in the Wood appeared in 2023, I didn’t want to set the older collection aside,
“Impatient Griselda” is just seven pages long and there are a couple of full readings on YouTube (about a dozen minutes). If you want to hear it in Atwood’s own voice, she reads it as part of this performance presented by Theater of War Productions and Toronto International Festival
The title of this story reminded me of both “The Last Interview” series and the Proust Questionnaire—as it has been broadcast in CBC’s “The Next Chapter” with the interview questions posed to contemporary authors in an otherworldly, beyond-the-grave-ish questioning tone. It strikes me as a piece that would have
Julia is lying on the hotel bathroom floor with a nosebleed, a few hours before her literary reading, from her book of poetry, at an event in northern Ontario. She jokes that she’s a “promising” poet, which means that her fee is lower than that paid to poets who
