Hello Friends! I am busy preparing for my year of short story reading and obsessing. If you haven’t checked out my list of the first fifteen short stories I’ll be reading in 2022, you can do so here (and lmk which stories you think should finish out the month).
For now, I’d love to hear about the one short story that opened the gates for you. Which story was it, and what about it changed you and the way you saw stories? If you have a link, please share it. If not, let us know what book it’s in.
Comment here, and please feel free to comment on other people’s comments— no doubt there will be some overlap!
Ann Beattie’s “Snow” and Alice Adams’ “My First and Only House”— both broke what I had absorbed as fundamental conventions of fiction. I love the economy of “Snow” and taught it regularly for 15 years.
Five Tuesdays in Winter by Lily King! Or any short story from the Five Tuesdays in Winter collection. (Five Tuesdays in Winter is both the name of the second story in the collection, and the collection) :) The collection is full of vignettes telling the beautifully normal stories of lives.
Ann Beattie’s “Snow” and Alice Adams’ “My First and Only House”— both broke what I had absorbed as fundamental conventions of fiction. I love the economy of “Snow” and taught it regularly for 15 years.
Five Tuesdays in Winter by Lily King! Or any short story from the Five Tuesdays in Winter collection. (Five Tuesdays in Winter is both the name of the second story in the collection, and the collection) :) The collection is full of vignettes telling the beautifully normal stories of lives.