Beautiful Sentence #12 ~ Alexandra Kleeman

“Even then I knew: whatever hollow I made in you if I left would heal up like a hole sunk into water, quick as water rushing to fill some passing wound.” – Alexandra Kleeman, “You, Disappearing,” Intimations

Eudora Welty on Writing “A Worn Path”

A truly wonderful discovery from You Tube: an interview about the writing of the short story “A Worn Path” with its writer, Eudora Welty. The story was first published 70 years ago in February of 1941 in The Atlantic Monthly, and we are still reading it. More evidence of the value of short stories.

And The Winner Is…Pt 3

I know you have just been waiting and waiting and waiting for this list of favorite short stories I’ve promised you for quite sometime now. Thanks again to all of you who put a vote in for your favorite. A few days ago, I posted the first place winner (“Pet Milk,” by Stuart Dybek) and the […]

Why The Short Story? “Goosebumps,” says Dennis McFadden

Dennis McFadden lives and writes in an old farmhouse called Mountjoy on Bliss Road, just up Peaceable Street from Harmony Corners in upstate New York.  “Diamond Alley,” from his collection of linked stories, Hart’s Grove (Colgate University Press, June, 2010), was recently selected for inclusion in Houghton Mifflin’s The Best American Mystery Stories 2011.  His […]

And the Winner Is…pt 1

The votes are still being tallied for Favorite Short Story, and this being Chicago, many of the voters are following our city motto: “Vote Early and Often.” So far, though, more than 60 separate short story titles have been named favorites by more than 50 readers. And this is just a small sampling of the […]

Why The Short Story?

Like so many writers, I loved to read when I was a child. I remember SRA books—do you remember those? You’d have to be of a certain age, and maybe of a certain region of the world. Anyway, SRA was a reading comprehension program for grade schoolers where you could read at your own pace, […]