Sarah Selecky’s This Cake is for the Party Thomas Allen, 2010 A lot of readers think of short stories like the crumbs on the cover image of Sarah Selecky’s stories: short stories are what’s left behind when a writer couldn’t make something whole out of an idea, couldn’t serve it
As November's reads settle out, the 2010's reading challenges fall into line, and in quiet moments I am reflecting on the reading year and making bookish plans for 2011. You know how it is? How many bookish promises we readers make to ourselves, before the reader's fickle gaze shifts to
Chris Adrian "The Warm Fuzzies" The New Yorker Fiction: 20 Under 40 September 27, 2010 issue Why You Might Choose to Not Read this Post: 1. You don't care for short stories; 2. You think The New Yorker is all pretentious-ish-ness; 3. Anything with the word Fuzzies in it can't
Cynthia Flood's The English Stories Biblioasis, 2009 The end of the first story in Cynthia Flood's collection of interconnected stories goes like this: "Sometimes she took off the lid and put her nose right into the box, to inhale." Readers only met Amanda Ellis nine pages ago, so you might think
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie "Birdsong" The New Yorker Fiction: 20 Under 40 September 20, 2010 issue "She was not merely resting her eyes on the car next to hers, as people often do in Lagos traffic; she was looking at me." It's this look which occasions Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's short story "Birdsong";
