Jayne Anne Phillips, a former writing instructor of mine at Rutgers-Newark, and a fantastic writer of the short form, referred to the “flash” piece as “one-page fiction.” (She made these pieces famous in her impossibly good Black Tickets.) I don’t think she liked the term flash, and I know many others who despise it. I, on [...]
David S. Atkinson: Short Stories Present a Divine Singularity
When Atticus Books first invited me to submit thoughts on the short story, I immediately formed grand plans. I was going to write such an impassioned and persuasive essay that the masses were going to remember. For a brief moment, I was going to personally lead the renaissance of the short story. However, I then [...]
Chuck Richardson: Short Stories Are Like a One Night Stand
I wonder why short fiction isn’t as popular as the novel. Maybe because it’s more like a one night stand than the slower, longer term and, dare I say, more respectable relationships we have with certain novels. But I like the idea that within the span of a single night, in just an hour perhaps, [...]
One More Page: An Interview with Eileen McGervey
Isn’t there some song about finding what you’ve been looking for in your own backyard? Or something like that? Well, either way, as self-professed indie bookstore lovers we were thrilled to discover One More Page Books, a bright, cheery book shop just a short cruise around the beltway from us in Arlington, Va. As if [...]
Mickey Laurence Cohen: Flash Fiction Is Only for the Moment
I hate short stories. Hate to read them, not a big fan of writing them. I like novels, I like the feeling I’m entering an entirely new world, or creating one. The best novels can build their own vocabulary, even a new language altogether. Short stories are windows. Windows are nice, especially with curtains, and [...]
Mike Maggio: Stories Are Rooted In the Oral Tradition
The short story is the crystalline form of the novel; that is, it takes the essence of what makes a novel (character, plot, dramatic development) and condenses it into a form that is whole and pleasing. What the novelist accomplishes in two or three hundred pages, the short storiest, if I can coin that term, [...]
Eric D. Goodman: Short Stories Take Skill and Work
ERIC D. GOODMAN ON THE SHORT STORY When I began fiction writing, I used to think the smart thing to do was to tackle the novel straight away. I knew (although I wasn’t exactly right) that a novel could get a power agent and a big-time publisher and transform a writer into a career novelist [...]
May Is National Short Story Month
National Short Story Month makes us want to crack open a bottle of champagne and guzzle the bubbly for thirty-one straight days. The brainchild of Dan Wickett at the Emerging Writer’s Network, National Short Story Month is the first-cousin to April’s National Poetry Month: a month-long celebration of the short story, from craft to [...]
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Randall DeVallance: Short Stories Are Catnip for Amateurs I remember reading somewhere, about five years ago, that more than half of all Americans ... -
Rebecca Kanner: Short Stories Dwell In Possibility What I love most about the short story is that you can do things that ... -
Kurt Mueller: Flash Fiction is Like Poetry, Built of Baking Soda and Cocaine Flash fiction is different. You don’t see it all too much, but when you do ... -
Aaron Jacobs: Short Stories Provide a Pleasant Discomfort Imagine the scene in that Florida hotel room in the hour after Seymour Glass rid ...
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Lady My friend’s mother gropes a metal grocery cart, yells at sidewalks, flails her broad arms ... -
Publisher Throws Cracked Reading Glasses in the Ring Bleary-Eyed Book Monger Joins Club and Breaks Rules, All Before Reading I’ve decided to do ... -
(Life Is a) Book Review Blog Carnival Welcome to the 60th edition of the Book Review Blog Carnival, and the first of ... -
Atticus Review: Six Degrees Left of Literature KENSINGTON, MD — Atticus Books publisher Dan Cafaro has organized a small team of conspirators ...
