EffYeahShortStories

A little more aware, a little more in love

[effyeahshortstories-blog]

Every time he passed a car, he took another pull from the bottle. Wind rushed through his open window and dried my sweat. The Impala felt like it was floating above the highway. You did good, I kept saying to myself, over and over. It was the only goddamn thing my old man ever said to me that I didn't try to forget.

Donald Ray Pollock, "Real Life"

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“I feel like people accept the first thing I show them,” she said, “and that’s all I ever am to them.” ― Mary Gaitskill, Don’t Cry

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Powell's is having a sale on select short story collections, including books by Karen Russell, Stuart Dybek, George Saunders, J. Robert Lennon and twenty-some-odd more. Thirty percent off! Take advantage!

[mttbll]

One of the simplest ways I know to find truth in fiction is to pay attention and to make connections. For me, so much of writing is taking notice and asking questions, and figuring out how everything is connected. I keep a small notebook of observations from daily life, just lines here and there about things that capture my attention. When I write, I try to figure out how to pull everything together—how bear populations might be connected to Amelia Earhart’s flight, or to lobster anatomy and the dawn of WWII and the bright hope of teenage girls. To me, truth in fiction is a belief that everything constellates together. I just have to be open to learning how it does.

Anne Valente (via mttbll)

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Foreign editions of The Lottery, by Shirley Jackson. Counterclockwise: Chinese, German, Spanish.

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She was the kind of girlfriend God gives you young, so you’ll know loss the rest of your life

Junot Diaz, This Is How You Lose Her (via texaszetalove)

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Ten months before, Lucy had moved to Bisbee and found work in a breakfast café, having become the very person she feared most—a woman in a shapeless uniform serving eggs to working men, the oldest waitress in the place, alone and not wanting to be, living in a dump and drinking herself to sleep. She was not yet forty. She thought she should know better and felt worse for it.

"Bisbee," by Chris Offutt, the first short story published by the Electric Lit offshoot Okey-Panky.

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Foreign editions of Rock Springs, by Richard Ford. Counterclockwise: Portuguese, Spanish, Finnish.

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Foreign editions of Like Life, by Lorrie Moore. From top to bottom, left to right: Italian, French, Portuguese, French.

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Foreign editions of Legends of a Suicide, by David Vann. Top to bottom, left to right: Romanian, Spanish, Dutch, Turkish, Danish, Croatian.

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Short story reading list for my fall fiction workshop (though I always end up shifting things around a little here and there during the semester):

“Three Things You Should Know About Peggy Paula,” Lindsay Hunter

“In the Cemetery Where Al Jolson is Buried,” Amy Hempel

“Benji,” Chinelo Okparanta

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"I grew impatient. Tired of excess, language for the sake of language, five hundred pages novels that should be two hundred fifty, all the bloat and gravitas. I wanted to be precise, to let the line hit, and not trample over the beat."

Megan Martin interviews Sara Lippmann, author of Doll Palace (Dock Street Press, forthcoming). Read the full interview here.

[effyeahshortstories-blog]

12 People On The One Book You Should Definitely Read This Fall

4. Blueprints for Building Better Girls – Elissa Schappell

Hands down the best collection of short stories I have ever read. Schappell dives deeply into the not so talked about struggles of womanhood, wifehood, & motherhood from 1970 to present by interweaving the lives of 8 female characters in her second novel. That being said –  it’s far from chick lit, and while it may be a relatable read for women, it’s truly an enlightening read for men too.

-Chelsea Forbes-Terry

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And on another level, my kind of artistic aesthetic was formed during the era of punk. And recently I heard Billy Idol talk about punk music. And he said, “It’s all kind of the same because the songs started kind of at full tempo and they went for two-and-a-half minutes and then they ended very abruptly.” And so I found that so many of my short stories start out at full speed, they run for nine pages and then they drop off a cliff. And so I think that short stories serve that punk aesthetic.

Chuck Palahniuk, interviewed at Kirkus for the release of his new anthology, Burnt Tongues.

[effyeahshortstories-blog]

25 Authors Who Wrote Great Books Before They Turned 25

Karen Russell — St. Lucy’s Home for Girls Raised by Wolves

The average hacky young writer takes their stabs at magical realism, but it’s brilliant lights like Karen Russell who can take rare premises — girls literally raised by wolves, a family that fights alligators in swampy Florida — and makes them sing. Rightfully named a MacArthur genius just last year, she’s very sweet as well and she has great hair. She is the worst.

I Remember reading the jacket copy on this book for the first time and just brimming with envy for all her accomplishments. But, yeah, she's earned it all and this book is one of a kind, a real sock-rocker.

[effyeahshortstories-blog]

Flings, Justin Taylor's latest story collection, is available today.

From the A.V. Club review: "Reading Justin Taylor’s new short story collection, Flings, is like reading two books, one by a good literary fiction writer, the other by a great writer who makes you forget about genre and media altogether." [continue reading]