“Before I was a writer, I always wanted to be Elvis Presley.”
Reading Alistair MacLeod, from the Beginning
“I just wish he’d write more.” (David Adams Richards) “I think if you’re Irish and maybe it coves all the world…but if you’re irish certainly the stories give you a great shock.” (Colm Toibin) He has all “the tenderness and the brutality together”. (Lisa Moore) “I think those stories are as good as anything that has ever been written.” (Alexander MacLeod, ok, yeah, he’s his son, but he’s not the only person with this opinion).
Week by week, Story by story: Alistair MacLeod (16 stories, 2021-2022) Mavis Gallant (123 short stories, 2017-2020) and Alice Munro (147 short stories, 2011-2015). Who’s next?
From websites to prizelists, from “staff picks” to magazines: where do you find short stories to read?.
Allowing too much time to pass without reading a short story is like leaving too much time between desserts: eventually I must have one.
Recent Bookchat
About Short-fiction pages that I’ve been turning
(For recent bookchat across all categories, visit Home)
Margaret Atwood’s Old Babes in the Wood, “Impatient Griselda” #MARM2024
“Impatient Griselda” is just seven pages long and there are a couple of full readings on YouTube (about a dozen minutes). If you want to hear it in Atwood’s own voice, she
Margaret Atwood’s Dancing Girls, “Dancing Girls” #MARM2024
Happy 85th birthday to Margaret Atwood! I wonder what she thought being 85 would be like when she wrote the title story of her first collection, Dancing Girls (1977). The original publications
Week Three: Update and Check-In #MARM2024
Has anyone else read “Ariadne Sends a Message,” an Atwood poem from Paper Boat: New and Selected Poems 1961-2023 shared on Lithub last month? See how easy it is to participate in
Margaret Atwood’s Old Babes in the Wood, “The Dead Interview” #MARM2024
The title of this story reminded me of both “The Last Interview” series and the Proust Questionnaire—as it has been broadcast in CBC’s “The Next Chapter” with the interview questions posed to
Margaret Atwood’s Dancing Girls, “Lives of the Poets” #MARM2024
Julia is lying on the hotel bathroom floor with a nosebleed, a few hours before her literary reading, from her book of poetry, at an event in northern Ontario. She jokes that
Margaret Atwood’s Old Babes in the Wood, “My Evil Mother” #MARM2024
I don’t like the word ‘evil’: does anyone? Well, some. If only for effect. The showrunners for this show, for instance. [I’ve not watched it. But maybe I should: I had fun
Margaret Atwood’s Dancing Girls, “Training” #MARM2024
MARM 2024 PLANS Launch (November 1) Dancing Girls, “Training” (November 5) Old Babes in the Wood, “My Evil Mother” (November 7) Week Two: Update and Check-In (November 10) Dancing Girls, “Lives of
Two Fiction, Two Non-Fiction, and One In-Between #LoveYourLibrary
A little time has passed since I took this photograph but, already, there are more leaves off the trees and on the ground. It’s been rather warm, but early in September, two
Curious about the short form?
Wonder what makes stories tick?
“The best short stories contain novels. Either they are densely plotted, with each line an insight, or they distill emotions that could easily have spread on for pages, chapters.”
“The divine art is the story. In the beginning was the story…. Within our whole universe the story only has authority to answer the cry of heart of its characters, that one cry of heart of each of them: ‘Who am I?'”