Thursday, May 31, 2012

In Closing: National Short Story Month 2012

We've spent the month of May here at What She Might Think showcasing a story a day in celebration of National Short Story Month.  Rather than having a story-for-today, here is the list of every selected story, along with a link to its original post (and from there, a link to the story's text).

Day 1-4: "Diagnostic Drift" by Michael Martone
Day 5: "The Brewsters" by Laura Ellen Scott
Centennial Statue by Alan Cotrill, at
Coshocton, Ohio Public Library
Day 6: "The Juniper Tree" (folkstory, no author)
Day 7: "All the Anne Franks" by Erik Hoel
Day 8: "Roots" by Chadwick Redden
Day 9: "Concerning Ghosts" by Michael Stewart
Day 10: "Mirrors" by Carol Shields
Day 11: "The Red Bow" by George Saunders
Day 12: "Young Goodman Brown" by Nathaniel Hawthorne
             by Joyce Carol Oates
Day 14: "Hands" by Sherwood Anderson
Day 15: "For Sale" attributed to Ernest Hemingway
Day 16: "Of Missing Persons" by Jack Finney
Day 17: "Old Lady Lloyd" by L.M. Montgomery
Day 18: "The Tell-Tale Heart" by Edgar Allan Poe
Day 19: "The Baby-Sitter" by Robert Coover
Day 20: "Bartleby the Scrivener" by Herman Melville
Day 21: "The Red House" by Ian T. MacMillan
Day 22: "The Things They Left Behind" by Stephen King
Day 23: "The Still Point of the Turning World" by Patricia Highsmith
Day 24: "The Lottery" by Shirley Jackson
Day 25: "Show-and-Tell" by George Singleton
Day 26: "The Daredevil's Wife" by Tom Noyes
Day 27: "Story About the Body" by Robert Hass
Day 28: "Speaking of Courage" by Tim O'Brien
Day 29: "Inland Sea" by Stuart Dybek
Day 30: "The River" by Flannery O'Connor

This is not an ever-fixed list.  Certainly, some of the greats have been left out, such as Virginia Woolf, F. Scott Fitzgerald, William Faulkner, Kate Chopin, Raymond Carver and many others.  Should they be on here?  Absolutely.  Next year, then.  Next year.  But this is a fine list, she thinks, of short stories and their writers--both living and not, whose work shows why the genre has continued, will continue, and should be celebrated this month and every day until it returns with flowers. 


If you chose a story for today, what would it be?

Wednesday, May 30, 2012

Short-Story Month: Day 30, The River by Flannery O'Connor

"It occurred to him that he was lucky this time that they had found Mrs. Connin who would take you away for the day instead of an ordinary sitter who only sat where you lived or went to the park. You found out more when you left where you lived. He had found out already this morning that he had been made by a carpenter named Jesus Christ. Before he had thought it had been a doctor named Sladewell, a fat man with a yellow mustache who gave him shots and thought his name was Herbert, but this must have been a joke."

"North Georgia River" by Melissa,
Used under CC license
We're drawing toward the end of National Short Story Month, and have yet to feature a story by one of the best American writers, Flannery O'Connor.  

And, so, today's selection is her story "The River". "The River" follows a boy whose parents have hired a Southern fundamentalist--perhaps by mistake, as it seems--to watch him for the day.  She ends up taking the boy to a river baptism, a new experience for the boy who later returns to the river alone.  

Like nearly all of O'Connor's stories, although her own religiosity and tendency toward trying to save her readers through careful allegorical imagery and grotesque images, "The River" defies O'Connor's religious wish in the story and shows us complex characters in the strange situations that religion itself stages time and again.  Regardless of O'Connor's intentions, "The River" is an excellent story of the way humans try to control their own lives by controlling each other's and the terrible fiasco that comes from such behavior.  And the main character, "Bevel", is hilarious, too.  And he knows it.




"The Riverby
Flannery O'Connor

(link goes to a nearly full "preview" 
of the story on GoogleBooks)

Tuesday, May 29, 2012

Short-Story Month: Day 29, Inland Sea by Stuart Dybek

by Shirl, used under CC license
Today's selected story is two sentences long.  And the sentences are made to work so hard, but with a seeming lack of effort, that certainly one should wonder if this is poetry or prose.  Right now, it's categorized as flash fiction, but seems more of the imagist camp, of the William Carlos Williams club.  Regardless.

Were every sentence in fiction so well built, like the architecture of a ballerina's extended leg, well, then, that would be lovely. 

The story also was selected as part of the annual Wigleaf series, which is aimed at collecting the best flash fiction published in a given year, and where she discovered this.




Stuart Dybek
(2011)


Monday, May 28, 2012

Short-Story Month 2012: Day 28, Speaking of Courage by Tim O'Brien

by z0xx Under CC license
"The town seemed remote somehow. Sally was married and Max was drowned and his father was at home watching baseball on national TV."


Today's selection is a war story that follows the character Norman Bowker who, having returned from war, finds himself driving circles around a lake in his father's truck, and in his memory.


by Tim O'Brien
(1990)



Sunday, May 27, 2012

Short-Story Month 2012: Day 27, Story About The Body by Robert Hass

Photograph of a beehive in a tree overlooking a hill
by Charlotte Nordahl, CC license
"The young composer, working that summer at an artist's colony, had watched her for a week."

Embedded within a newspaper article by poet Robert Pinksy is Robert Hass's prose poem "Story About the Body".  Or not poem, one might argue, but flash fiction piece.  Or one might argue, not flash fiction but a very short story.  What's the difference?  Good question.

For today, the work will be a short story and one that definitely, in its writing and reading, is a celebration of the form--since, of course, the title itself draws attention to the form.  So, without further ado, here is the story for Day 27 of National Short-Story Month, from his collection Human Wishes,

  


by Robert Hass



Saturday, May 26, 2012

Short-Story Month 2012: Day 26, The Daredevil's Wife by Tom Noyes

Photo of a photo of niagra falls
by Rebecca Partington,
Used under CC license

     "Otherwise a calm evening. No eleventh-hour ultimatums, no last-ditch begging. The daredevil and his wife stay home sip wine, channel-surf.
      The daredevil's wife is understandably anxious and distressed, but the daredevil knows, deep-down, she's on board."


Day 26.
National Short-Story Month.

In continuing the lighter of the dark stories from yesterday, she has to decided to continue the lighter of the dark with a dark story lightly told about a man bent on saving his wife, or himself.







by Tom Noyes
(scroll down the Eureka website to read)

Friday, May 25, 2012

Short-Story Month 2012: Day 25, Show-and-Tell by George Singleton

Photograph of a turtle against a black-and-white checked background (floor)
by Taro Taylor,
Used under CC license


He held his arms wide open, as if I were a returning POW. "Did your teacher send back a note to me?"
I reached in my pocket and pulled out the letter from Héloise to Abelard. I handed it to him and said, "She made me quit reading."
"She made you quit reading? How far along did you get?"
I told him that I had only gotten to the part about "sugar-booger-baby." 



Six days remain of National Short Story Month, and so far, of the selected stories, none have been humorous.  And so, it's about time for some relief--a story about a boy whose father courts his teacher through a series of covert show-and-tells--by one of the United States' humorists, George Singleton. Of course, for humor to work there must be the bittersweet, too, and there is, there is.  

"Show-and-Tell" is from Singleton's collection The Half-Mammals of Dixie, which she remembers reading in the backyard on a blanket in San Marcos, Texas, having found the book at a library sale. 


by George Singleton
(2001)


Thursday, May 24, 2012

Superb News! Pringle-Toungate 2012 Artist Trust Fellowship Recipient



A Washington arts foundation, Artist Trust has awarded Erin Pringle-Toungate a writing fellowship.  She is one of sixteen artists in Washington state to be awarded the honor, and one of eight in the literary arts category. Over 400 people applied for a fellowship.  Artist Trust is a not-for-profit arts organization that supports regional artists in their pursuits.  


"Fellowships award $7,500 to practicing professional artists of exceptional talent and demonstrated ability."  ~from the Artist Trust website


To read the list of other winning artists, please see the Artist Trust website or the press release in The Seattle Times.

***

Needless to say, she's very pleased and will be able to finish Midwest in Memoriam completely this summer and make a deep start into a new book.  A new book?  It's dazzling to consider.

Cheers!

Short-Story Month 2012: Day 24, The Lottery by Shirley Jackson

Page 24 of 1948 issue of The New Yorker
From original, in The New Yorker
"Mr. Summers spoke frequently to the villagers about making a new box, but no one liked to upset even as much tradition as was represented by the black box." 

Of course, long before Hunger Games, there was Shirley Jackson's short story, "The Lottery," which is today's selection.  "The Lottery" takes place on a day unlike any day for the reader, but a day the village has seen year after year, the day when a name is drawn and one villager wins. . .




by Shirley Jackson
(1948)
(also in audio version)

Wednesday, May 23, 2012

Short-Story Month 2012: Day 23, The Still Point of the Turning World by Patricia Highsmith

Photograph of Patricia Highsmith wearing pearls on the cover of her collected work
Cover of
Nothing That Meets the Eye
"There is a small park, hardly more than a square, far over on the West Side in the lower Thirties, that is almost always deserted. A low iron fence runs around it, setting it off from a used car lot, a big redstone public dispensary of some sort, and the plain gray backs of shabby apartment buildings that share the same block with it." 

From the author of Strangers on a Train, and The Talented Mr. Ripley, and other novels, comes today's selected story.  Any number of the stories that appear in Highsmith's uncollected works, Nothing That Meets the Eye, could be here.  Highsmith is a master story-writer, and it is a current shame that this collection hasn't yet won a major award.

 "The Still Point of the Turning World" is the story of two mothers who are strangers to each other and who bring their children to play at a park; the story follows the plot imagined by one mother about the other.  Highsmith takes a common situation and makes of it a masterpiece of assumption and despair.






by Patricia Highsmith
(somewhere between 1938 and 1949)



Tuesday, May 22, 2012

Kore Press Finalist: How the Sun Burns Among Hills of Rock and Pebble

A quick and lovely announcement:


Erin Pringle-Toungate's story, "How the Sun Burns Among Hills of Rock and Pebble", was awarded the honor of being a finalist in the 2012 Kore Press Short Fiction Chapbook Award.  The judge, Karen Brennan, had this to say about the story:


"What I most admire about this fine story is the author’s ability to render hyper-dramatic—almost gothicmaterial with a beautifully orchestrated lyricism that never over-reaches itself.  Indeed, the story of the young girl grieving for her murdered sister is made even more poignant for its distant, almost oracular point of view, a point of view that allows the reader to glimpse not only the protagonist’s confusion and sorrow, but also the indifferent, soulless landscape in which she wanders.  A little Cormac McCarthy, a little Carson McCullers, 'How the Sun Burns' is full of dense atmosphere, apocalyptic overtones and heart."



Photograph of a pond behind a barbed wire fence with shadowed flowers
"Dark Pond" by Elliot Bennett, Used under CC license
The other two finalists were Carol Test and Rebecca Entel, and the winner was Mary Byrne, a writer originally from Ireland who now lives in France. Byrne will receive $1,000 and her story, "A Parallel Life" will be published in chapbook form by Kore Press.  Stay tuned to Kore Press (www.korepress.org) so you can be the first in line to read Byrne's story.  If you absolutely cannot wait, then you can also find her work in Best Paris Stories




Pringle-Toungate's story will be in her next book, Midwest in Memoriam. You'll also be able to read the story in the Spring 2013 issue of minnesota review.

Short-Story Month 2012: Day 22, The Things They Left Behind by Stephen King


"The things I want to tell you about--
the ones they left behind--showed up 
in my apartment in August 2002. I'm sure
 of that, because I found most of them 
not long after I helped Paula Robeson 
with her air conditioner. Memory always 
needs a marker, and that's mine."



It would be a total fault not to include Stephen King in a celebration of National Short Story Month since he is one of the working masters of the short story.  Any number of his stories could be selected, but the reasoning for the selection of his story "The Things They Left Behind" are these: 1) It's one of King's more recent works, and she thinks, shows more his abilities than some of his recent longer works; and 2) it's one of the few creative works to deal with 9/11 in a smart and cathartic manner.

As with any of King's work, it is difficult if not impossible to find online; even when magazines publish King, his work is available only to those who have paying subscriptions to that magazine (and as well it should be, regardless of who the writer is).  "The Things They Left Behind" is from King's collection Just After Sunset, and the title links to the story via the Google Preview for the collection.







by Stephen King
(2008)


Monday, May 21, 2012

Short-Story Month 2012: Day 21, The Red House by Ian T. MacMillan

Photograph of a red house in the country
Red House by Mike Klein,
Used under CC license
She discovered today's story, "The Red House", in the 1997 edition of the O'Henry Prize Stories which was assigned in one of her college classes (this is also the book where she first read Carol Shields).  She thinks she even wrote an essay about "The Red House", regarding its ending especially, which is fantastic in its brevity and poetry.  The story follows a quiet boy who lives in an isolated family with a strange father (this is totally based on her memory).

There is no excerpt because her copy of the prize stories was eaten her dog Gretta, then a puppy.  

For years, she has hunted for this writer while the story haunted her.  But he was difficult to find; perhaps because his last name has a typo on the Random House website ("MacMillian"), or perhaps because the story's title isn't listed in anywhere but three places online. But after some sleuthing, she has found out these important details: "The Red House" originally appeared in The Gettysburg Review; it appears in MacMillan's book Our People: Stories (2008), which has a publication year one year after his death; and in an interview with Karen I. Johnson, MacMillan had this to say about "The Red House": 

[Question by Johnson]
Two of these stories, “A Story of Water You Could Never Tell” 
and “The Red House” are not what I would consider traditional 
narratives.    How would you describe the style of these two stories 
and what led you to write in this style? 

[MacMillan's Response]
“The Red House” was an experiment in the use of second 
person (you).  It felt right, until I read some draft and saw 
the word ‘you’ too many times, so I began crossing them 
out, in effect crossing out subjects and verbs of a lot of 
sentences, which gave the narrative a kind of stream of 
consciousness quality.  The result enhances the tangibility 
of the experience, I think, and “A Story of Water You 
Could Never Tell” was a further exercise in the use of this 
approach.  

*

Needless to say, this story is high up on her list of excellent stories, and thanks to National Short Story month and choosing a story a day, she has found its book and has ordered her copy. She hopes you will, too.



by Ian T. MacMillan,
(1996)

Sunday, May 20, 2012

Short-Story Month 2012: Day 20, Bartleby, the Scrivener by Herman Melville

Bartleby. I am a rather elderly man. The nature of my avocations, for the alst thirty years, has brought me into more than ordinary contact with what would seem an interesting and somewhat singular set of men, of whom, as yet, nothing, that I know of, has ever been written--I mean, the law-copyists, or scriveners. I have known very many of them, professionally and privately, and if I pleased, could relate divers histories, at which good-natured gentlemen might smile, and sentimental souls might weep. But I waive the biographies of all other scriveners, for a few passages in the life of Bartleby, who was a scrivener, the strangest I ever saw, or heard of. While, of other law-copyists, I might write the complete life, of Bartleby nothing of that sort can be done. I believe that no materials exist, for a full and satisfactory biography of this man. It is an irreparable loss to literature.
First page of Bartleby, from here
“Why do you refuse?”  
  “I would prefer not to.”


And for Day 20 of National Short-story month, we turn to one of the great American writers whose work serves as a foundation for all that happens this day, Herman Melville.  

Today's selection is his story "Bartleby", the tale of the disenchantment of bureaucracy and the waste of human life when stamped into the system. 

If you enjoy this story, you'll likely find a similar experience in Nikolai Gogol's story, "The Overcoat."






by Herman Melville 
(1853)




Saturday, May 19, 2012

Short-Story Month 2012: Day 19, The Babysitter by Robert Coover

Photograph of payphone with handset facing out
Photograph by Kelly Teague,
Used under CC license
"She arrives at 7:40, ten minutes late, but the children, Jimmy and Bitsy, are eating supper, and their parents are not ready to go yet.   From other rooms come the sounds of a baby screaming, water running,  a television musical (no words: probably a dance number--patterns of gliding figures come to mind)." 

It's Day 19 of National Short-Story month.  Today's selection is Robert Coover's story, "The Babysitter" from his collection Pricksongs & Descants (1969) .  If the story were a piano piece, it would be likely subtitled Variations on a Theme.

Like the composer who shows his or her skill by performing a piece in varying styles, Coover demonstrates his skill as a storyteller-writer in "The Babysitter" by creating a larger experience of plot through weaving (or unweaving) the possibilities that arise from the well-known urban legend typically known as The Babysitter and the Man Upstairs, its several variants, and the imaginative mind-space of the characters.  



(1969)



Coover won the 1987 Rea award, and the jury had this to say of his work:


"For taking the dross of the ordinary and spinning it into the treasure of myth Robert Coover [is] a writer who has managed, willfully and even perversely, to remain his own man while offering his generous vision and versions of America."






Friday, May 18, 2012

Short-Story Month 2012: Day 18, The Tell-Tale Heart by Edgar Allan Poe

It is Day 18 of National Short-Story Month, and who better than Edgar Allan Poe for such a day?  Here is the first story she ever read by him, "The Tell-Tale Heart" (although she read it in fourth grade in a collection adapted for children, and at that time, she didn't know what "adapted" meant and was quite irritated to find out, once she did, that it meant she hadn't actually read the story as it was meant to be).

The following newspaper article is the original publication of "The Tell-Tale Heart" (January 11, 1843), and it comes from the Edgar Allan Poe Digital Collection virtually located at the University of Texas at Austin-Harry Ransom Center.


by Edgar Allan Poe
(1843)


The New York Sun. [From the Pioneers.] The Tell-Tale Heart. By Edgar A. Poe. Art is long and Time is fleeting, And our hearts though stout and brave, Still, like muffled drums, are beating Funeral marches to the grave. [Longfellow.  Then text of story begins.
Original newspaper for The Tell-Tale Heart,
The New York Sun 1/9/1843. For larger version, go here 

Thursday, May 17, 2012

Short-Story Month 2012: Day 17, Old Lady Lloyd by L.M. Montgomery

"The children believed she amused herself counting the gold in the big black box under her bed. Spencervale children children held the old lady in mortal terror; some of them--the "Spencer Road" fry--believed she was a witch [.  . .]" 

Illustration of fictional character Anne Shirley from L.M. Montgomery's book Chronicles of Avonlea
From Chronicles of Avonlea,
character Anne Shirley
It's Day 17 of National Short-Story Month.  Until today, every selected story has been by a United States author.  Today's selection, however, if from the United States' close relation, Canada.


L.M. Montgomery's story collection, Chronicles of Avonlea, follows the place, people, and the main character Anne Shirley, from Montgomery's popular series Anne of Green Gables. By this time, Anne Shirley is a young woman; however, knowledge of Anne Shirley's past is not necessary to enjoying these works.  Most, if not all, the characters are not from the original series.


It has seemed to her every time she had read any of Montgomery's work, whether at age 12 or 30, that Montgomery is a superior writer at, especially, the crafting of landscapes.  It is somewhat easy to have a reader imagine, let's say, an orchard.  But it is something quite other to walk the reader through the orchard as another person.  But Montgomery can do that, and does that consistently.  It is a beautiful world L.M. Montgomery gives us.  

There is a fragile lightness and cheer and underlying wish for goodness that comes beneath Montgomery's work, but that does not come from, for example, a negligence of the desperation of humankind.  No, Montgomery does not have a sort of Pollyanna-with-closed-eyes perspective but seems almost constantly aware of the precipice, and it is that that enriches her work.  

But we can save what she might think about Montgomery's work for another day.  Today we must read the story "Old Lady Lloyd", and celebrate that such a work and writer should be in the world.      




by L.M. Montgomery
(1912)


Spencervale gossip always said that "Old Lady Lloyd" was rich and mean and proud. Gossip, as usual, was one-third right and two-thirds wrong. old Lady Lloyd was neither rich nor mean; in reality she was pitifully poor--so poor that "Crooked Jack" Spencer, who dug her garden and c hopped her wood for her, was opulent by contrast; for he, at least, never lacked three meals a day, and the Old Lady could sometimes achieve no more than one. But she was very proud--so proud that she would have died rather than let the Spencervale people, among whom she had queened it in her youth, suspect how poor she was and to what straits was somtimes reduced. She much preferred to have them think her miserly and odd--a queer old recluse who never went anywhere, even to church, and who paid the smallest subscription to the minister's salary of anyone in the congregation.
Text for Our Lady Lloyd by L.M. Montgomery

Wednesday, May 16, 2012

Short-Story Month 2012: Day 16, Of Missing Persons by Jack Finney

Walk in as though it were an ordinary travel bureau, 
the stranger I’d met at a bar had told me. Ask a few
ordinary questions—about a trip you’re planning, a 
vacation, anything like that. Then hint about The Folder
a little, but whatever you do, don’t mention it directly; 
wait till he brings it up himself. And if he doesn’t, you 
might as well forget it. If you can.

Until today, each story selected in celebration of National Short Story Month has been published online, and as such, each post has linked to where that story exists on the vast web.  However, today's selection cannot be found online (outside of a copyright-infringed version), but it should be singled out, regardless.

She originally read "Of Missing Persons" in the anthology, Stories of Suspense.  It's a story well worth checking out--a sort of time-travel story that begins in a city, in an anonymous store. The story appears in his collection, About Time: 12 Short Stories.

From here







"Of Missing Persons"
by Jack Finney
(1955)





Tuesday, May 15, 2012

Short-Story Month 2012: Day 15, Perhaps Ernest Hemingway

According to Snopes.com, it has not been determined whether or not the famous six-word story attributed to Ernest Hemingway was actually written by Hemingway.  Regardless of the story's author, that's today's selection for National Short Story Month:


For Sale: baby shoes, never worn





Photograph of woman alone in field flanked by forest
Used under CC license



Monday, May 14, 2012

Short-Story Month 2012: Day 14, Hands by Sherwood Anderson



Sherwood Anderson
It's a new week and the midpoint of celebrating National Short Story Month.  And so, today's selection is a story from the Midwest, and from one of the most remarkable short-story collections written or published in the United States.   



"The story of Wing Biddlebaum is a story of hands. Their restless activity, like unto the beating of the wings of an imprisoned bird, had given him his name. Some obscure poet of the town had thought of it. The hands alarmed their owner."


"Hands" by Sherwood Anderson
from his story collection Winesburg, Ohio (1919)

Sunday, May 13, 2012

Short-Story Month 2012: Day 13, Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been? by Joyce Carol Oates

"He wagged a finger and laughed and said,
 'Gonna get you, baby'" [. . .]" 


Perhaps the story for Day 13 should be 
Little Red Riding Hood in order to set 
the mood for what might have been 
tomorrow's story, but instead, here's 
what she would call a contemporary 
retelling of that folktale by Joyce Carol Oates, 
"Where Are You Going, Where Have you Been?"


In Video: Joyce Carol Oates talks about
"Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?"
(2:02 runtime)




by Joyce Carol Oates
(1966)





(For those  Joyce Carol Oates fans interested in seeing some of Oates's original manuscript pages  for her other stories, please visit the virtual archive at University of San Francisco. Also, if you missed Oates's winning of the 1990 Rea award for short fiction, see the NYT article.)




Saturday, May 12, 2012

Short-Story Month 2012: Day 12, Young Goodman Brown by Nathaniel Hawthorne

"Faith kept me back a while," 
replied the young man, with a tremor in his voice, 
caused by the sudden appearance of his companion, 
although not wholly unexpected.




"Trees in the Fog" by Matthew Bietz,
Used under CC license

Yesterday's selection, "The Red Bow" by George Saunders, has always reminded me of one of my favorite stories.  And so to celebrate the twelfth day of National Short Story Month, please enjoy 

by Nathaniel Hawthorne 
(1835)  


Young Goodman Brown.  Young Goodman Brown came forth at sunset, into the street of Salem village, but put his head back, after crossing the threshold, to exhange a parting kiss with his young wife. And Faith, as the wife was aptly named, thrust her own pretty head into the street, letting the wind play with the pink ribbons of her cap, while she called to Goodman Brown.



Continue Reading

Friday, May 11, 2012

Short-Story Month 2012: Day 11, The Red Bow by George Saunders

Used under CC license

"NEXT NIGHT, walking out where 
it happened, I found her little red bow.
I brought it in, threw it down on the 
table, said: My God my God."
Day 11
National
Short Story 
Month


Today's selection, by George Saunders, was originally published in Esquire, later anthologized in Not Normal, Illinois, a nominee for the Bram Stoker award, and winner of a National Magazine Award.  The story appears in Saunders's story collection, In Persuasion Nation.

But the story is more interesting than all that.






by George Saunders
(2009)


Thursday, May 10, 2012

Short-Story Month 2012: Day 10, Mirrors by Carol Shields

Today's story selection
comes from a writer whose
line and work always
has a quiet patience to its
tone and content.  One of
the master writers of the
20th century who is most
known for her novels such
as the Pulitzer-Prize winning
Stone Diaries, Carol Shields.




"Untitled" by Daniel Oines,
Used under CC license






"From June to August they choose to forget who they are, or at least what they look like, electing an annual season of non-reflectiveness in the same way other people put away their clocks for the summer or their computers or door keys or microwave ovens."




Please, enjoy

 "Mirrors" 
by Carol Shields
(1996)






(Shields was originally from Illinois 
but later moved to Canada, so she's often 
thought of as a Canadian writer, but 
to this writer and also native of Illinois, 
Shields's concerns have always
seemed Midwestern.)



Wednesday, May 9, 2012

Box of Delights Anthology on Kindle

Aeon Press's Box of Delights, Cover
Winter 2011 - KINDLE VERSION
Box of Delights, edited by John Kenny and published out of Dublin, Ireland, is now available on the Kindle.

It may be National Short Story Month in the U.S., but if you want to make your celebration an international one,  try Box of Delights, an anthology of contemporary horror fiction by 16 writers around the world.  Her story, "The Lightning Tree", is one of those stories.


Box of Anthology writers 
(links follow to the writer's webpage)

Sean MacRoibin
Eleanor Marney
Erin Pringle

CLICK!
a) here for the U.S. Kindle edition of Box of Delights
b) here for the U.K. Kindle edition
c) here for a print copy of Box of Delights


Short-Story Month 2012: Day 9, Concerning Ghosts by Michael Stewart



Black and white photograph of a wire fan
"Fan" by Mike Schmid,
Used under CC license




"My ghosts move as trees age." 



National
Short
Story
Month 

Day 9.

                                          Selection.



                                                            "Concerning Ghosts" by 
Michael Stewart