What She Might Think

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)

"Where Are You Going,

Where Have You Been?"

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

"Young Goodman Brown"

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

by Zayed Hassan,

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.

"The Red Bow"

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)

Don D’Ammassa

Taylor Grant

Erik T. Johnson

Sean MacRoibin

Eleanor Marney

Erin Pringle