Milestones are markers that tell you how far it is from where you’ve come, and how far it is to where you’re going. I’ve been on Selected Shorts for about a year now, and this week’s episode marks where it all began. Back in 2010, the program recorded a story of mine, “Milestones,” read by […]
There’s a wonderful line in Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Sphinx” (performed this week on Selected Shorts by Kathleen Widdoes): “..the principle source of error in all human investigations lay in the liability of the understanding to under-rate or to over-value the importance of an object, through mere mis-admeasurement of its propinquity.” The object in this […]
I once shared an apartment so small I could touch both walls of my bedroom when I stretched out my arms. Our bathroom was so tiny there was no sink. We washed our hands and faces in the kitchen. At the breakfast table, we could open the fridge and pull down the cereal, without getting […]
Roughly, only ten percent of an iceberg can be seen floating above water. The other 90 percent is under the surface—treacherous for boats navigating the frozen seas, but a wonderful metaphor for dark emotions and hidden secrets. We have a special mini-edition podcast of Selected Shorts this week, in honor of the 100th anniversary of […]
I AM NOT WHERE YOU ARE. Because I am here. It’s the first day of the Sirenland Writers Conference, and students are arriving from all over the world to study writing with Dani Shapiro, Jim Shepard, Susan Orlean, and myself. While I’m away in this strange and beautiful place, there will be some equally strange […]
About a year ago, I was walking down Broadway and noticed a giant bug hanging on the door of a building. Normally I dismiss any large insect as some kind of roach. (I have seen NYC cockroaches as big as my own hand.) But the bright green wings of this creature made me stop and […]
Recently I finished reading the Manga series FullMetal Alchemist by Hiromu Arakawa, a coming of age story of two brothers who try to bring back the dead. It’s an interesting comic with complex characters, including seven “homunculi” who represent the deadly sins–the worst being Pride, shown in this panel (click to see a bigger image), who sucks up […]
A friend of mine used to collect snow globes. He had a whole shelf dedicated to their display, and people would bring globes back from around the world to add to his collection. Las Vegas, Rio, Pompeii, Beijing. Another shelf was added, and then another, until an entire wall of his apartment was full of […]
Every time I move my personal library shifts. I donate books, give others away to friends, and the most important ones I hold on to. I have boxed endless volumes and carried them up endless flights of stairs: a cavalcade of Best American Short Story collections, Tintin comics, four different editions of Jane Eyre, dictionaries upon dictionaries, […]
When a heart is broken it goes dark. A wave of depression, self-doubt and rage separates it from the world. But once the wave passes, something amazing can happen. The knowledge of that pain–the pain of loving someone, and losing them–can deepen our understanding, make us live our lives more carefully and more closely, and […]