With soaring sales, viral hits like Cat Person and a cameo by Tom Hanks, the form seems to be staging a comeback. But did it ever go away?In 2017, almost 50% more short story collections were sold than in the previous year. It was the best year for short stories since 2010. Booksellers are reporting a surge in popularity for the form, commentators note publishers are buying more collections and issuing them with greater care and enthusiasm; in December the newcomer Kristen Roupenian cut five- and seven-figure deals in the UK and US after her New Yorker story “Cat Person” went viral. On top of all that, collections are being reviewed more than ever before, the Sunday Times EFG short story award (worth £30,000) has received its highest ever number of entries and the BBC national short story award continues to grow in popularity. We are experiencing the renaissance of the short story form, right?Wrong; which isn’t to say 2017 wasn’t a good year for the short story – it was, but the “renaissance of the short story” story is an old one that is rolled out year after year. Does that matter? I think it does. By getting caught up in this recurring phantom narrative, and dwelling on press release froth rather than the work being produced, we spurn the opportunity to talk about short stories in a way that might actually deepen how they are understood and engaged with by readers.How can the short story ever have time to wither, given the frequency of its rebirth?In the cases of Tom... Continue reading at 'The Guardian'
[ The Guardian | 2018-03-12 00:00:00 UTC ]
If you're in search of more of the best short stories of all time, start with this list to build your to-read list! Continue reading at Book Riot
[ Book Riot | 2022-04-05 10:32:00 UTC ]
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One of her country’s first writers to address female sexuality from a woman’s perspective, she produced four novels and dozens of short stories that could be read as political allegories. Continue reading at The New York Times
[ The New York Times | 2022-04-04 22:13:26 UTC ]
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The 1918 short story ‘Bliss’ is one of the best-known and most widely studied stories by the writer Katherine Mansfield (1888-1923). Although Mansfield never wrote a novel, her short stories helped to redefine the possibilities of the story form. ‘Bliss’ is a story full of ambiguous and... Continue reading at Interesting Literature
[ Interesting Literature | 2022-04-02 14:00:03 UTC ]
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What are some of the best short stories by female writers? Women have been making their mark on the short story form since the form became popular in the nineteenth century, and many notable female practitioners of the short story, such as Katherine Mansfield and Kate Chopin, were among the […] Continue reading at Interesting Literature
[ Interesting Literature | 2022-03-23 15:00:17 UTC ]
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The inventive and philosophical short stories of the Argentinian writer Jorge Luis Borges (1899-1986) take in a range of themes. Like many other authors, Borges had a set of preoccupations which he revisited time and again in his fiction, and a number of his stories are variations on the same […] Continue reading at Interesting Literature
[ Interesting Literature | 2022-03-22 15:00:53 UTC ]
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Are you tired of getting your short stories rejected by literary magazines with weird names like Ploughshares, The Paris Review, and, lol, The New Yorker? Do you, a writer of a searing, minimalist narratives of longing and loss amid the ruins of late capitalism, need to eat? Sure you do! Well,... Continue reading at Literrary Hub
[ Literrary Hub | 2022-03-17 16:16:55 UTC ]
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‘Two Kinds’ is a short story by the American author Amy Tan (born 1952), published as part of her book The Joy Luck Club in 1989. The story is about a young American girl born to Chinese parents; her mother pushes her to become a child prodigy, but the daughter […] Continue reading at Interesting Literature
[ Interesting Literature | 2022-03-08 15:00:22 UTC ]
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Her books sold more than 11 million copies and earned her top literary honors in Britain. Continue reading at The Washington Post
[ The Washington Post | 2022-03-05 00:28:45 UTC ]
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As women writers adapted to a changing post-WWII job market, so too did they adapt in their work, translating their skills into writing suspense for television and turning short stories into screenplays. In her essay on adaptation and “gendered discourses,” Shelley Cobb writes that “feminist... Continue reading at Literrary Hub
[ Literrary Hub | 2022-02-28 09:50:01 UTC ]
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The following first appeared in Lit Hub’s The Craft of Writing newsletter—sign up here. It is from Story Club with George Saunders, a Substack publication and literary community where Saunders offers weekly discussions of the craft of the short story. Both free and paid subscriptions are... Continue reading at Literrary Hub
[ Literrary Hub | 2022-02-25 09:51:07 UTC ]
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Book Reviews Statue of renowned Kurdish historian, author, and poet Mastoureh Ardalan (1805–1848) in Erbil / Photo by Levi Meir Clancy / Unsplash Even though they appear to have a lot to say about the historical, political, cultural, and literary... Continue reading at World Literature Today
[ World Literature Today | 2022-02-23 21:05:41 UTC ]
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As a literary genre, fantasy is one of the oldest and most recent. Although modern fantasy only began to be recognised as a distinct genre in the late twentieth century, thanks largely to the popularity of J. R. R. Tolkien and his imitators, its roots can be traced back millennia. […] Continue reading at Interesting Literature
[ Interesting Literature | 2022-02-23 15:00:28 UTC ]
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Although he is probably better known as a poet, Langston Hughes (1902-67), a leading writer of the Harlem Renaissance, also wrote some of the finest short stories of the early twentieth century, and ‘Red-Headed Baby’ is one of his best. ‘Red-Headed Baby’ was published in Hughes’ 1934 collection... Continue reading at Interesting Literature
[ Interesting Literature | 2022-02-22 15:00:01 UTC ]
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Interviews The creative writing of the twenty-first century will be remembered for having sanctioned the passage of text from paper to digital support. But is it really true that the author’s cards have disappeared? And how do contemporary authors write... Continue reading at World Literature Today
[ World Literature Today | 2022-02-08 20:43:39 UTC ]
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Book Reviews Antoine-François-Jean Claudet, [Multiple Exposures of the Moon] (1846–52), daguerreotype, 2019.47, Horace W. Goldsmith Foundation Fund, through Joyce and Robert Menschel / Courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum of Art Queer... Continue reading at World Literature Today
[ World Literature Today | 2022-02-01 20:37:36 UTC ]
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A nonbinary teenager on their way home from an eating -disorder treatment center who tries to convince a stranger she is not a vampire, an aspiring fashion designer/dry-cleaning worker who develops an obsession with a customer, a community of people with Hansen’s disease that welcome and attempt... Continue reading at Electric Literature
[ Electric Literature | 2022-01-27 12:00:00 UTC ]
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Independent press Scratch Books, "dedicated to the art of the short story", is to launch in London in March, kicking off with an event featuring authors including Irenosen Okojie and Sarah Hall. Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2022-01-24 22:49:58 UTC ]
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Want to be a fly on our bookshelf? These are the novels, short stories, essays and cookbooks that writers and editors are reading this year. Continue reading at The Huffington Post
[ The Huffington Post | 2022-01-24 10:45:02 UTC ]
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Death is a common theme in literature, and many of the finest writers of short fiction have explored the fear, event, and aftermath of death using the short-story form. Below, we select and introduce ten of the very best classic short stories which have death as their theme, ranging from […] Continue reading at Interesting Literature
[ Interesting Literature | 2022-01-19 15:00:39 UTC ]
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Booming appetites for crime, sci-fi and romance drive fiction sales 20% higher than in 2019, with Richard Osman the year’s bestselling authorBook sales continued to climb last year despite lockdowns, with more than 212m print books sold in 2021 – the highest figure of the last decade.Driven by... Continue reading at The Guardian
[ The Guardian | 2022-01-11 17:21:11 UTC ]
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