The Good Thief goes to Brazil! Thanks to Editora Rocco for taking a chance on Ren.
I waited tables and bartended for years, working at night after my low-paying publishing jobs in order to make rent. I’d be on my feet for 8-10 hours shifts, constantly moving and lifting heavy trays, keeping the orders of 8 or 9 tables straight in my head and negotiating with the chef, the dishwashers, the [...]
As everyone heads home for Thanksgiving, Selected Shorts is packing two great stories for you to listen to on your trip, either as a free podcast or on your local public radio station. The first is David Schickler’s “Jamaica,” performed by our very own Isaiah Sheffer, and features a domestic situation gone horribly and hilariously wrong, when a husband [...]
This week’s edition of Selected Shorts is dedicated to one author and one story: “Wildwood” by Junot Díaz. This story originally appeared in The New Yorker, and later became a part of Díaz’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, which tells of a fukú (curse) that follows Oscar and his family [...]
We’ve got two wonderful authors and two great stories this week on Selected Shorts, both about people in trouble. The first is “Red from Green,” by Maile Meloy, performed by Patricia Kalember. “Red from Green” follows a teenage girl on a dangerous camping trip, where trouble comes not from the great outdoors, but from the [...]
One of the most exciting lit mags publishing today (besides One Story, of course) is Electric Literature. Their mission? “To use new media and innovative distribution to return the short story to a place of prominence in popular culture.” Last season Selected Shorts hosted an event at Symphony Space celebrating Electric Literature with some great actors reading work [...]
This week on Selected Shorts we feature two stories by the great Irish writer Edna O’Brien, celebrating the release of her latest collection of stories, Saints & Sinners (which won the Frank O’Connor International Short Story Prize last month). O’Brien began her career nearly 50 years ago with the publication of her first novel (part [...]
Earlier I was talking about The Post-It Note Diaries by Arthur Jones, and now it is finally out in the world. Click on the video below to find out more. And if you’re interested in reading about my near-death in a graveyard, get your copy of the book here.