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On "My Aeschylus” by Jim Shepard
Josh WeilThe best short stories are simultaneously the least understandable and most fully felt. They hits us with undeniable force, a concrete impact...
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On "Bad Neighbors" by Edward P. Jones
Dana JohnsonEveryone knows Edward P. Jones’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, The Known World. Or at least they should. Regularly, I find myself talking...
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On "Florida" by Mavis Gallant
Lynne TillmanIn any Gallant story, life or reality is curious, daunting, often frustrating, sad or tragic. And, she’s funny, too, in her way
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On "Brass" by Joy Williams
Christine SchuttAurora, Columbine, Sandy Hook, Charleston, all sites of rampage killings that left four or more dead. Inspired by just such mayhem, “Brass,”...
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On "Miss Grief" by Constance Fenimore Woolson
Anne Boyd RiouxWhen Constance Fenimore Woolson wrote “Miss Grief,” shortly after her arrival in Europe in late 1879, she was, unlike her eponymous...
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On "An Unwritten Novel" by Virginia Woolf
Kristopher JansmaI teach two hours from where I live, so I spend a lot of time writing on the bus. It’s quiet and the route is scenic––once we get through North Jersey
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On "The Elephant Vanishes" by Haruki Murakami
Lily TuckItalo Calvino once wrote that he wanted to edit a collection of stories that consisted of one sentence and, as an extraordinary example, he cites...
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On "A Love Match" by Sylvia Townsend Warner
Edith Pearlman“A Love Match” by Sylvia Townsend Warner is the story of brother-sister incest. No, I haven’t spoiled it—the fact of the incest and the...
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On "Sex Education" by Dorothy Canfield Fisher
Don ChaonI have long been interested in writers who have fallen into neglect. Dorothy Canfield Fisher is, unfortunately, among those whose work is seldom...
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On "The Death of a Government Clerk" by Anton Chekhov
Deb Olin Unferth“Death of a Government Clerk” is one of Chekhov’s first published stories. I love it for its comic nonchalance, playful absurdity, brevity...