February 4th, 2013
elliottholt
This week only: I'm co-hosting an Alice Munro book club
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Alice Munro lit short stories book club
December 13th, 2012
elliottholt
recommend a book of short stories?
ernstfoster

One of my favorite anthologies is My Mistress’s Sparrow is Dead: Great Love Stories, from Chekhov to Munro, edited by Jeffrey Eugenides. The book includes many great stories: “The Dead” by James Joyce, “Spring in Fialta” by Nabokov, “How To Be an Other Woman” by Lorrie Moore, “Natasha” by David Bezmozgis, “Dirty Wedding” by Denis Johnson, “We Didn’t” by Stuart Dybek, “What We Talk About When We Talk About Love” by Raymond Carver, “Lady with a Lap Dog” by Chekhov, and “The Bear Came Over the Mountain” by Alice Munro.

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September 18th, 2012
elliottholt
Zoom This year’s edition of The PEN/O. Henry Prize stories is exceptional. Yiyun Li’s “Kindness,” Jim Shepard’s “Boys Town,” Anthony Doerr’s “The Deep,” Alice Munro’s “Corrie” are among the masterpieces (and I don’t use that word lightly) in this book.

This year’s edition of The PEN/O. Henry Prize stories is exceptional. Yiyun Li’s “Kindness,” Jim Shepard’s “Boys Town,” Anthony Doerr’s “The Deep,” Alice Munro’s “Corrie” are among the masterpieces (and I don’t use that word lightly) in this book.

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Jim Shepard Yiyun Li Alice Munro Anthony Doerr PEN/O.Henry Prize Stories short stories fiction literature
July 19th, 2012
elliottholt
Zoom Still life with Alice Munro. (I’m reading “Open Secrets” again.)

Still life with Alice Munro. (I’m reading “Open Secrets” again.)

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road trip Seattle Matthews Beach lit Alice Munro fiction short stories
July 18th, 2012
elliottholt
Zoom Back in April, I was honored to escort Caitlin Horrocks at the One Story Literary Debutante Ball because she’s a genius writer and she’s my friend. (We met when we were Scholars at the Sewanee Writers’ Conference in 2009.) But let’s be clear: I was filling in for the established writer who was her mentor. I don’t pretend to have taught Caitlin anything! Note: I used to work for One Story.

Back in April, I was honored to escort Caitlin Horrocks at the One Story Literary Debutante Ball because she’s a genius writer and she’s my friend. (We met when we were Scholars at the Sewanee Writers’ Conference in 2009.) But let’s be clear: I was filling in for the established writer who was her mentor. I don’t pretend to have taught Caitlin anything!

Note: I used to work for One Story.
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One Story magazine Caitlin Horrocks fiction literature short stories lit Sewanee Writers' Conference
July 1st, 2012
elliottholt

No Thelma to My Louise

There’s no Thelma to my Louise, but I’m still hitting the road. I’m going to spend the month of July driving cross country alone. I’ll set out from Brooklyn on July 4th (independence indeed). I’ll be stopping to visit friends along the way and working on a new short story (not while I’m driving, obviously). And I’m bringing a lot of books, including:

  1. David Maraniss’s new biography of Obama (audiobook—I love listening to non-fiction on road trips)
  2. Robert Caro’s Passage of Power (audiobook—27 CDs! The voice who read this book aloud must still be tired)
  3. Absalom, Absalom!, which I’m inspired to reread thanks to this riff by John Jeremiah Sullivan
  4. A Far Cry from Kensington by Muriel Spark (I love Spark but haven’t read this one)
  5. The PEN/O. Henry Prize Stories 2012 (an exceptional anthology with stories by some of my favorite writers including Alice Munro, Jim Shepard, Steven Millhauser, Anthony Doerr, Lauren Groff, Kevin Wilson, and Yiyun-Li)
  6. The Patrick Melrose Novels by Edward St. Aubyn (the first four were published in one Picador paperback, which I tore through and now want to reread)
  7. Faithful Place by Tana French (I’ve been binging on Tana French this summer—I devoured her first two mysteries, am halfway through this one and very excited for her new book, Broken Harbor, to come out later this month.)
  8. The Great Gatsby because I reread it every summer.
  9. Bleak House because (I’m embarrassed to say) I’ve never read it.

And my iPad and Nook are coming, too, in case I have a sudden hankering for a new book when I’m far from a good bookstore, and so I can catch up on issues of The New Yorker (I love the iPad app).

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books road trip Thelma and Louise reading vacation audiobooks non-fiction fiction short stories lauren groff kevin wilson alice munro jim shepard anthony doerr yiyun-li literature
June 17th, 2012
elliottholt

Short Stories You Should Read

Listed in no particular order. I forced myself to choose only one story per writer (very difficult in some cases). There is a lot of amazing short fiction out there, but these are stories—of various styles—that have stuck with me over the years and have taught me what a story can be. I’m sure I’m forgetting a lot of gems.

  1. “Wakefield” by Nathaniel Hawthorne
  2. “Berenice” by Edgar Allan Poe
  3. “The Lady with the Lap Dog” by Chekhov
  4. “The Overcoat” by Gogol
  5. “The Necklace” by Guy Maupassant
  6. “A Hunger Artist” by Franz Kafka
  7. “The Dead” by James Joyce
  8. “The Secret Life of Walter Middy” by James Thurber
  9. “Barn Burning” by William Faulkner
  10. “The Lottery” by Shirley Jackson
  11. “The Snows of Kilamanjaro” by Ernest Hemingway
  12. “Friend of My Youth” by Alice Munro
  13. “When We Were Nearly Young” by Mavis Gallant
  14. “Work” by Denis Johnson
  15. “Wants” by Grace Paley
  16. “The Swimmer” by John Cheever
  17. “A Good Man is Hard to Find” by Flannery O’Connor
  18. “Hitch-Hikers” by Eudora Welty
  19. “The Laughing Man” by J.D. Salinger
  20. “Cathedral” by Raymond Carver
  21. “In the Cemetery Where Al Jolson is Buried” by Amy Hempel
  22. “Sonny’s Blues” by James Baldwin
  23. “In the Heart of the Heart of the Country” by William Gass
  24. “After Rain” by William Trevor
  25. “White Angel” by Michael Cunningham
  26. “Girl” by Jamaica Kinkaid
  27. “A Rich Man” by Edward P. Jones
  28. “Do Not Disturb” by A.M. Homes
  29. “Twenty Minutes” by James Salter
  30. “Happy Memories” by Lydia Davis
  31. “Screenwriter” by Charles D’Ambrosio
  32. “Memory Wall” by Anthony Doerr
  33. “L. Debard and Aliette” by Lauren Groff
  34. “Bullet in the Brain” by Tobias Wolff
  35. “The Things They Carried” by Tim O’Brien
  36. “Boys Town” by Jim Shepard
  37. “The Fat Girl” by Andre Dubus
  38. “Pastoralia” by George Saunders
  39. “Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned” by Wells Tower
  40. “Men Under Water” by Ralph Lombreglia
  41. “All the Way in Flagstaff, Arizona” by Richard Bausch
  42. “Brownies” by Z.Z. Packer
  43. “Hell-Heaven” by Jhumpa Lahiri
  44. “Sindbad” by Donald Barthelme
  45. “I Used to Live Here Once” by Jean Rhys
  46. “The Girl Detective” by Kelly Link
  47. “Sororally” by Gary Lutz
  48. “Train” by Joy Williams
  49. “St. Lucy’s Home for Girls Raised by Wolves” by Karen Russell
  50. “The Magic Poker” by Robert Coover
  51. “Lady” by Diane Williams
  52. “Love and Honour and Pity and Pride and Compassion and Sacrifice” by Nam Le
  53. “Natasha” by David Bezmozgis
  54. “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?” by Joyce Carol Oates
  55. “A Spoiled Man” by Daniyal Mueenuddin
  56. “Rock Springs” by Richard Ford
  57. “The Custodian” by Deborah Eisenberg
  58. “In the Gloaming” by Alice Elliott Dark
  59. “You’re Ugly, Too” by Lorrie Moore
  60. “A Romantic Weekend” by Mary Gaitskill
  61. “Blessed Assurance” by Allan Gurganus
  62. “The Half-Skinned Steer” by Annie Proulx
  63. “Drown” by Junot Diaz
  64. “Immortality” by Yiyun Li
  65. “Sun City” by Caitlin Horrocks
  66. “None of the Above” by Suzanne Rivecca
  67. “Virgins” by Danielle Evans
  68. “Safari” by Jennifer Egan
  69. “Testimony of Pilot” by Barry Hannah
  70. “These Hands” by Kevin Brockmeier
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lit short fiction short stories literature reading
May 21st, 2012
elliottholt
I’m with Maile Meloy. “Nine Stories” is my favorite Salinger. This is the book that made me start writing short stories. newyorker: For the first post in a series where we ask New Yorker writers what book they have revisited most often, Maile Meloy writes on J.D. Salinger’s, “Nine Stories”: http://nyr.kr/Lb0Yza

I’m with Maile Meloy. “Nine Stories” is my favorite Salinger. This is the book that made me start writing short stories.

newyorker:

For the first post in a series where we ask New Yorker writers what book they have revisited most often, Maile Meloy writes on J.D. Salinger’s, “Nine Stories”: http://nyr.kr/Lb0Yza

Reblogged from The New Yorker
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salinger malie meloy short stories nine stories fiction writing literature

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I'm a fiction writer. My first novel YOU ARE ONE OF THEM will be published by The Penguin Press on May 30, 2013. My short stories have been published in The Pushcart Prize XXXV (2011 anthology) and other places. I grew up in Washington, D.C., and have lived in many cities (Moscow, London, Amsterdam, San Francisco, and New York). http://elliottholt.com/

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