Alexie, Dunning, Piatote and an Anthology Short Stories in April, May and June Whether in a dedicated collection or a magazine, these stories capture a variety of reading moods. This quarter, I returned to a must-read everything author and explored two new-to-me story writers.
Those of you who are reading here now, but not reading Alistair MacLeod’s short stories, will probably only be interested in the first couple of paragraphs after this introduction. Feel free to skip past the section that I've titled The Underneath, written with those who know the story-or other
Stories set in—and revolving around—Vietnam have appeared on BIP many times, like Marcelino Truong’s coming-of-age memoir in translation by David Homel: Such a Lovely Little War (2014; 2015) (his follow-up, Saigon Calling, brought the family to England). Also Robert Olen Butler’s Perfume River (2016) but to say much more
It’s ironic, that while so many are longing to safely travel these days, others are longing to stay put and continue to safely reside in their homelands. On the page, throughout last year, I travelled to twelve different cities, prompted by a local artist’s desk calendar, which inspired a
When you have been thrilled by a book, and you discover that someone has written a letter about being thrilled with that same book, even if it was a hundred years ago, it invites a certain companionship. When that letter-writer is writing to the author of that collection, you feel
