Winner of the 2015 National Book Award (Fiction) “The world is not a dichotomy of black and white– and Johnson captures the grayness of it with everyday, morally complex characters from different walks of life, each facing a crisis of humanity that smacks of tragicomedy. Johnson writes themes of technology, politics, and societal upheaval with …
The stories in Margaret Malone’s People Like You are so good—they’re only-book-on-a-desert-island good. They are exactly why I read, with their sumptuous minimalism, their gorgeous, particular detail, their delicious deadpan humor, their off-kilter characters. Like the book’s title, every sentence and paragraph is elegantly constructed to mean what it means and to mean more. But …
Once in a while, you come across an author who shifts your belief about what is possible, about what the written word can do, and what a short, ten-page story can make you feel. Carolyn Cooke is one of those authors, and Amor & Psycho will blow your mind. It’s dark and sexy. A little violent …
During my four residencies at the Rainier Writing Workshop, the MFA program at Pacific Lutheran University, I attended upwards of twenty-five excellent morning craft talks by our faculty. Only once did the audience simultaneously rise to give a standing ovation to the speaker – when Ann Pancake spoke about the importance of infusing art with …
“I just finished reading the new short story collection by B.J. Novak, called One More Thing: Stories and Other Stories. It is a good collection to dip in and out of. The stories are all funny. Some are more like random thoughts than stories, they are just a line or two. Some tell a funny …
“In the first story of April Wilder’s This Is Not an Accident, a nervous young woman doesn’t have an accident. In fact, she’s so preoccupied by the fact that she hasn’t had a car accident that she finds herself compulsively driving four hours to Iowa just to be sure she didn’t have an accident on …
“These stories reminded me of Lorrie Moore, whom I love, but if Lorrie Moore lived in a trailer in Olympia, Washington, with fewer puns but more loser boyfriends. Pretty funny, kind of sad, really good reading.” —Brian at Annie Bloom’s You can find Perillo’s stories and her PNBA Award-winning poetry at Annie Bloom’s in Portland …
This is one of my favorite short-story collections—actually, one of my favorite books—in a long time. Each story is its own little world, with a unique narrator and point of view. I'm amazed at Meloy's ability to write such diverse stories with humor, heart, and insight. credit scores It was so good I read it …
