Archive: Author: Hannah

Selected Shorts this week features two stories about difficult women:  “Beyond the Pale” by Joseph Epstein, performed by our own Isaiah Sheffer, and “Ma, A Memoir” by Lynn Freed, performed by the great Marian Seldes.  Seldes has been on stage, screen, TV and radio. She once  famously had her Tony Award for Albee’s “A Delicate Balance” stolen, and last year, when she won the Lifetime Achievement Award, she got up, said nothing, and left. Most recently she has starred in the video for “Burn My Shadow” by the band UNKLE (see above), which also serves as a trailer for the documentary: The Third Act of Marian Seldes. A difficult woman? Yes–and also positively brilliant. To hear for yourself, go here.

A few weeks ago there was a great interview in New York Times Magazine with J.J. Abrams, talking about his new movie, Super 8, and his early love of magic stores. In particular, Abrams discussed the magic of the Mystery Box. A box that you would buy and not open. NOT knowing what is inside the box, Abrams said, creates the magic, because it engages the imagination. In this way, mystery can sometimes be more important than knowledge.  To hear Abrams’s Ted Talk on this, and how it affected his storytelling technique, go here. But if you’d like to create some magic of your own, then listen to this week’s Selected Shorts, which includes wonderful stories that contain their own mysteries: “The Palmist” by Andrew Lam, performed by James Naughton; “The Occasional Garden” by Saki, performed by Daniel Gerroll; “The Balloon” by Donald Barthelme, performed by Maria Tucci; and “The Little Green Monster” by Haruki Murakami, performed by Dana Ivey. All of these stories are also available on the new CD by Selected Shorts, “A Touch of Magic.” For your time/station, or to download a podcast of this episode, go here.

This week on Selected Shorts, we’re featuring two Yiddish writers and the fabulist author Aimee Bender. “My First Love,” by Moishe Nadir (read by John Shea), is a beautiful love story set in a small Russian village. Sholem Asch’s “A Quiet Garden Spot” (read by Laura Esterman) explores the collective memory of family. “Job’s Jobs,” by Aimee Bender(read by Anjelica Huston) uses the biblical story of Job to explore the difficulties of writing. Listen to the show RIGHT NOW on our podcast, or go here to find your local time/station. Also, if you’ve been watching a lot of House lately, but still can’t get enough of Robert Sean Leonard, go here to get a FREE download of him reading Jonathan Lethem’s “The Spray,” just by signing up for the Selected Shorts Newsletter.