A little time has passed since I took this photograph but, already, there are more leaves off the trees and on the ground. It’s been rather warm, but early in September, two nights fell to “frost warning” temperatures, and that’s had an impact. The chipmunks don’t have time to
A couple weeks ago, I shared some recent short story reading, but right now I’m thinking about reading the final stories in Margaret Atwood’s Dancing Girls. And how I’ll soon read the next section from her newest collection Old Babes in the Wood. But this
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
