Today’s short story, “If You Were a Dinosaur, My Love” by Rachel Swirsky, won’t take you long to read; it’s just under a thousand words. It won a 2014 Nebula Award from the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America, and begins with these charming lines: If you were a dinosaur, my love, then you … Continue reading A Short Story For Saturday
This weekend’s short story is Joyce Carol Oates’ “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?“, first published in 1966. Its opening paragraphs: Her name was Connie. She was fifteen and she had a quick, nervous giggling habit of craning her neck to glance into mirrors or checking other people’s faces to make sure her … Continue reading A Short Story For Saturday
The opening paragraphs of Leo Tolstoy’s 1885 story, “Where Love Is, God is“: IN A CERTAIN TOWN there lived a cobbler, Martin Avdéiteh by name. He had a tiny room in a basement, the one window of which looked out on to the street. Through it one could only see the feet of those who … Continue reading A Short Story For Saturday
The New Yorker just made available Saul Bellow’s “A Silver Dish” from their archive, first published in September 1978. How it begins: What do you do about death—in this case, the death of an old father? If you’re a modern person, sixty years of age, and a man who’s been around, like Woody Selbst, what … Continue reading A Short Story For Saturday
Recently, we touched on John Cheever’s influence on Mad Men. This weekend, we’re highlighting one of Cheever’s most-loved stories, “The Swimmer.” The opening lines: It was one of those midsummer Sundays when everyone sits around saying, “I drank too much last night.” You might have heard it whispered by the parishioners leaving church, heard it … Continue reading A Short Story For Saturday
This weekend’s selection is a relatively obscure short story from Marilynne Robinson, “Connie Bronson,” published in the 1986 Summer-Fall issue of The Paris Review. How it begins: I had one friend named Connie Bronson who lived two houses up the street from me and was one year younger than I and two grades behind because … Continue reading A Short Story For Saturday
by Matthew Sitman The last few weeks we have tracked the responses to Adam Begley’s Updike, the new biography of the late novelist and critic, who also was an accomplished poet and short story writer. Today’s featured story is “The Varieties of Religious Experience,” which Updike published in The Atlantic just over a year after the September 11th terrorist … Continue reading A Short Story For Saturday
The first paragraph of Erika Schmidt’s “Story of a Family,” winner of the 2013 Nelson Algren prize for short fiction: This is how the family looks in 1988: a husband, a wife, a daddy, a mama; two girls, two sisters, two daughters. One daughter is 5. The other is 2. They both have white-blonde hair … Continue reading A Short Story For Saturday
April Ayers Lawson’s “Virgin,” from the Fall 2010 Paris Review, begins this way: Jake hadn’t meant to stare at her breasts, but there they were, absurdly beautiful, almost glowing above the plunging neckline of the faded blue dress. He’d read the press releases, of course. He recalled, from an article, her description of nursing her … Continue reading A Short Story For Saturday
Kate Chopin’s “The Story of an Hour” can be read in just a few minutes – and you’ll want to make it all the way to the end. Here are its opening paragraphs: Knowing that Mrs. Mallard was afflicted with a heart trouble, great care was taken to break to her as gently as possible … Continue reading A Short Story For Saturday
