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“I’m not consciously balancing humor and tragedy, but I know that they do exist side by side.” In this Louisiana Channel interview, Lorrie Moore talks about the nature of jokes, the emotional and tonal range of her short stories, and reflects on the sense of repetition in her novel I Am Homeless If This Is Not My Home (Knopf, 2023).
Watch the trailer for the short film Greta, directed by Benjamin Font and based on the short story of the same name by Miciah Bay Gault, which was first published in Switchyard magazine.
“I’m very interested in taking away a lot of the traditional furniture of a novel and making it a shorter experience and a more intense experience.” In this Politics and Prose Bookstore event, Kevin Barry reads from his new novel, The Heart in Winter (Doubleday, 2024), and talks about Irish labor history, his time spent with Irish communities in Montana, and his experiences writing in different forms.
In this Green Apple Books event in San Francisco, Zach Williams reads from his debut story collection, Beautiful Days (Doubleday, 2024), and discusses the state of contemporary short stories in a conversation with author Kate Folk.
In this Late Night With Seth Meyers interview, Amor Towles talks about the television adaptation of his novel A Gentleman in Moscow, and bringing life to the short stories in his new book, Table for Two (Viking, 2024).
“I do think that everything you see or do or experience does become part of the material that you create with, ultimately.” In this Books Are Magic event, Gina Chung reads from her short story collection, Green Frog (Vintage, 2024), and discusses the cultural importance of mythological creatures in a conversation with Jimin Han. For more from Chung, read her installment of our Writers Recommend series.
Ling Ma reads from her short story “Tomorrow,” which appears in her collection, Bliss Montage (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2022), in this 2023 video from the Windham-Campbell Prizes Festival where she was awarded a prize in fiction.
"It’s life bleeding into stories. I feel like the longer we live, the more life bleeds into stories.” In this Books Are Magic event, Yiyun Li reads from her latest short story collection, Wednesday’s Child (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2023), and discusses story endings, why it can take years to finish a story, and what sustains a plotless story in a conversation with David Means.
“He’s been such a mirror for pop culture, but now he’s his own pop culture.” In this trailer for King on Screen, a documentary about the many film and television adaptations of Stephen King’s stories and novels, directors and screenwriters discuss what makes King the master of horror.
“I saw a writer who was quite new to the craft, but excited by it, and sort of experimental, and there’s a freshness to these stories that surprised me.” In this 2003 PBS NewsHour interview, renowned author and critic John Updike speaks about looking back on his early career and the stories included in his collection The Early Stories: 1953-1975 (Knopf, 2003) with correspondent Jeffrey Brown.
