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 […]
In Greek mythology, Cassandra was the daughter of the King & Queen of Troy. One day the god Apollo fell in love with her and gave her the gift of predicting the future. But when she didn’t love him back, Apollo put a curse on Cassandra so no one would believe anything she said. Like […]
There is a saying that every man’s life is a labyrinth, and sooner or later they will have to face their minotaur. I was reminded of this when I first heard Stephen O’Connor’s “Ziggurat,” featured on this week’s edition of Selected Shorts. But first I thought, what the heck is a Ziggurat? Well, a Ziggurat is a kind […]
Did you miss Alec Baldwin reading Colson Whitehead’s essay “Lost & Found”? Don’t worry–it will be repeated on this week’s Selected Shorts, along with three wonderful new stories. First off is “Good Intentions” by One Story author Etgar Keret (seen here pulling an Esther Williams). His story will be performed by the one and only Leonard Nimoy. You’ll […]
This week Selected Shorts features one story: “The Things They Carried” by Tim O’Brien, read by film and TV actor Dylan Baker. Chosen as one of the Best American Short Stories of the Century, “The Things They Carried” begins with a list of physical objects carried by different members of a platoon in Vietnam, and eventually moves on to spiritual […]
Whenever someone asks me how long you have to live in New York before you can call yourself a New Yorker, I always quote Colson Whitehead’s “Lost & Found”: “You are a New Yorker the first time you say, ‘That used to be Munsey’s’ or ‘That used to be the Tic Toc Lounge’…You are a New […]
This week’s episode of Selected Shorts serves up two crime stories: “False Alarm” by Dave Barry, performed by Larry Keith and “Double Check” by Thomas Walsh, performed by James Naughton. “Double Check” originally appeared in the great pulp magazine, Black Mask. The inspiration behind Quentin Tarantino’s film Pulp Fiction, Black Mask published crime writers like Dashiell Hammett […]