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 ]
‘Raymond’s Run’ is a 1971 short story by Toni Cade Bambara (1939-95) which originally appeared in the anthology Tales and Short Stories for Black Folks. In the story, a young girl named Hazel Parker prepares for a race; Bambara uses this plot to explore the challenges young black women face […] Continue reading at Interesting Literature
[ Interesting Literature | 2023-01-09 15:00:24 UTC ]
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Don’t miss these short stories featuring firefighting drones, lab-grown mammals, long-buried fan fiction, and much more. Continue reading at Slate
[ Slate | 2022-12-30 10:50:00 UTC ]
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The short stories of the American writer Kate Chopin (1850-1904) are important precursors to twentieth-century modernism, and can be viewed as forerunners to the short fiction of Katherine Mansfield, Virginia Woolf, and other high modernists. Where other nineteenth-century writers tended to... Continue reading at Interesting Literature
[ Interesting Literature | 2022-12-28 15:00:24 UTC ]
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Naira Kuzmich died in 2017, at age 29 from lung cancer, but her posthumous short story collection, In Everything I See Your Hand, was only recently brought to fruition by University of New Orleans Press (June 2022). The included stories were widely published in literary journals and one was... Continue reading at Literrary Hub
[ Literrary Hub | 2022-12-22 09:53:38 UTC ]
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The list of novels that began their lives as short stories is long and well known. Jeffrey Eugenides’s The Virgin Suicides, Eudory Welty’s The Optimist’s Daughter, Jhumpa Lahiri’s The Namesake (which began as a short story titled “Gogol”), Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway (expanded from her 1923... Continue reading at Literrary Hub
[ Literrary Hub | 2022-12-15 09:52:44 UTC ]
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‘Simmering’ is a short story by the Canadian author and poet Margaret Atwood (born 1939). Published in Atwood’s 1983 collection Murder in the Dark, the story might be regarded as a piece of flash fiction, micro-fiction, or even an example of prose poetry. ‘Simmering’ posits a society in which... Continue reading at Interesting Literature
[ Interesting Literature | 2022-11-28 15:00:57 UTC ]
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Challenging myths about heterosexual white South African men, Prinsloo published four books of short stories in 12 years. Continue reading at The Conversation
[ The Conversation | 2022-11-28 05:37:53 UTC ]
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‘Salvador Late or Early’ is a short story in Woman Hollering Creek and Other Stories, a 1991 collection of short stories by the American writer Sandra Cisneros (born 1954). The story – which lacks a conventional plot and is more of a character study – briefly describes the life of […] Continue reading at Interesting Literature
[ Interesting Literature | 2022-11-25 15:00:30 UTC ]
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‘The Man Who Was Almost a Man’ is a short story by the American author Richard Wright (1908-60), originally published as ‘Almos’ a Man’ in Harper’s Bazaar in 1940 before being revised by Wright later in his life. The final version was published in 1960. In the story, a black […] Continue reading at Interesting Literature
[ Interesting Literature | 2022-11-11 15:00:28 UTC ]
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Emily Temple rounds up the 60 greatest academic satires, campus novels, and boarding school bildungsromans of the last 100 years. | Lit Hub Reading Lists Lynn Caponera considers the wild and wonderful legacy of Maurice Sendak’s creations (and his rigorous work routine). | Lit Hub Art &... Continue reading at Literrary Hub
[ Literrary Hub | 2022-11-05 10:30:11 UTC ]
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It’s possible to love a video game. To be devoted to it, to value what it does for you, and how it makes you feel. To want the best for it. Not in the same way you love a person — or at least, I hope not. But take a look at any major fan convention for video games, movies, TV, or almost... Continue reading at PC World
[ PC World | 2022-11-01 15:51:22 UTC ]
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It’s possible to love a video game. To be devoted to it, to value what it does for you and how it makes you feel, and to want the best for it. Not in the same way you love a person — or at least, I hope not. But take a look at any major fan convention for video games, movies, TV, or almost... Continue reading at PC World
[ PC World | 2022-10-28 10:45:00 UTC ]
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Combat veteran Bill Glose’s short stories in “All the Ruined Men” crack open the challenges faced by Gulf War soldiers and their families. Continue reading at The Christian Science Monitor
[ The Christian Science Monitor | 2022-10-19 15:00:11 UTC ]
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‘The Man I Killed’ is a story from The Things They Carried, a 1990 collection of linked short stories by the American writer Tim O’Brien. The collection focuses on a platoon of American soldiers fighting in the Vietnam War. As the title of this short story suggests, ‘The Man I […] Continue reading at Interesting Literature
[ Interesting Literature | 2022-10-17 14:00:42 UTC ]
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There's no better time to read horror short stories than October. With Halloween fast approaching, dive into these 20 spooky tales. Continue reading at Book Riot
[ Book Riot | 2022-10-17 10:31:00 UTC ]
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Author of the Inspector Alan Banks series and welcome presence at crime fiction festivals around the worldPeter Robinson was the creator of the immensely popular Inspector Alan Banks crime series, set in Yorkshire – the books sold almost 9m copies in 19 languages and spawned a successful... Continue reading at The Guardian
[ The Guardian | 2022-10-14 16:44:04 UTC ]
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The Leeds-born novelist whose work included poetry and short stories as well as his bestselling thrillers will be remembered as a master of plot and characterThe crime writer Peter Robinson has died aged 72, his publisher has announced.The Yorkshire-born author died suddenly on the 4 October... Continue reading at The Guardian
[ The Guardian | 2022-10-07 11:56:17 UTC ]
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Sotheby’s describes 17th-century Cervantes editions as a ‘once in a lifetime’ opportunity for collectorsOne day in the early 1930s, a young Bolivian diplomat named Jorge Ortiz Linares walked into the illustrious Maggs Bros bookshop in London to ask if they might have a particularly fine edition... Continue reading at The Guardian
[ The Guardian | 2022-10-06 13:44:15 UTC ]
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Tom Hanks—who previously spent time crushing a beloved indie bookstore with his discount big box chain (which was then probably crushed by Amazon and yes I am talking about his role in You’ve Got Mail and not his real life)—will publish a novel with Knopf this spring. The book, The Making of... Continue reading at Literrary Hub
[ Literrary Hub | 2022-09-27 15:17:38 UTC ]
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‘A Good Man Is Hard to Find’ is one of the best-known short stories by Flannery O’Connor (1925-64), who produced a string of powerful stories during her short life. First published in the collection A Good Man Is Hard to Find in 1955, the story is about an American family […] Continue reading at Interesting Literature
[ Interesting Literature | 2022-09-26 14:00:41 UTC ]
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