A Small, Good Thing

In this episode, Naomi Kanakia (a.k.a Woman of Letters on Substack) tells the fascinating tale of the New Yorker Short Story. Since the times of Harold Ross and editor Katharine White, the New Yorker has been the most renowned literary magazine publishing short fiction in the US. Does a “New Yorker short story” really exists? And if it does, what does it look like?Naomi Kanakia is the author of a hugely popular blog on Substack (link below), has an upcoming non-fiction book with Princeton University Press (What’s so Great about the Great Books?) and is working on a collection of short stories to be released by Random House in 2028.  Works cited:Naomi Kanakia, What’s so Great about the Great Books? (Princeton University Press, 2026). John Cheever, The Stories of John Cheever (Random House, 1981). Amy Reading, The World She Edited: Katharine S. White at the New Yorker (Mariner Books, 2024). Sally Benson, ‘Lady with a Lamp’, New Yorker, January 18, 1947. The New Yorker, 55 Short Stories from the New Yorker (Simon & Schuster, 1949). Blake Bailey, Cheever: A Life (Alfred A. Knopf, 2009). John O’Hara, Appointment in Samarra (Harcourt Brace, 1934). Irwin Shaw, The Young Lions (Random House, 1948). Mavis Gallants, Collected Short Stories (Everyman’s Library, 2016).  Naomi’s Substack blog: https://www.woman-of-letters.com/ You can read Naomi’s Substack post about the New Yorker short story here: https://www.woman-of-letters.com/p/money-and-prestige.Podcast intro and outro credits: Shield, Leroy, Taylor Holmes, and Robert W Service. The shooting of Dan McGrew. 1923. Audio. Retrieved from the Library of Congress.

Richard Brautigan is most famous for his iconic novel Trout Fishing in America (1967), but he was also a prolific short story writer and poet. Whether you are a hardcore Brautigan fan, or you have never heard of him, this episode is for you! Chris Gair is the director of the Andrew Hook Centre for American Studies, Senior Lecturer in American Literature and Culture at the University of Glasgow, and one of the greatest Brautigan experts! He is the author of The American Counterculture (Edinburgh University Press), of The Beat Generation: a Beginner’s Guide (Oneworld), and of numerous articles on American literature. Works mentioned:Richard Brautigan, Trout Fishing in America (Four Seasons Foundation, 1967).Richard Brautigan, A Confederate General from Big Sur (Grove Press, 1965).Richard Brautigan, In Watermelon Sugar (Four Seasons Foundation, 1968).Richard Brautigan, Revenge of the Lawn (Simon & Schuster, 1971).Richard Brautigan, Tokyo-Montana Express (Delacorte Press, 1980).Richard Brautigan, ‘The Post Offices of Eastern Oregon’ in Revenge of the Lawn (Simon & Schuster, 1971), pp. 72-79.Richard Brautigan, ‘The Scarlatti Tilt’, in Revenge of the Lawn (Simon & Schuster, 1971), p. 37.Lionel Trilling, ‘Huckleberry Finn’, in The Liberal Imagination (Secker and Warburg, 1951), pp. 104-117 (p. 106).Ernest Hemingway, In Our Time (Boni & Liveright, 1925). Andrew Hook Centre for American Studies (University of Glasgow) https://surreylearn.surrey.ac.uk/d2l/le/lessons/283532/topics/3511681Podcast intro and outro credits: Shield, Leroy, Taylor Holmes, and Robert W Service. The shooting of Dan McGrew. 1923. Audio. Retrieved from the Library of Congress.

Chigozirim Nwaosu is a PhD candidate in English Literature in the School of Literature and Languages at the University of Surrey (UK). Her research focuses on the intersectionality between race, gender and sexuality and how it affects contemporary societies. In this episode, Chigozirim discusses the representation of gender and sexuality in Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s 2009 collection The Thing Around Your Neck. Listen to find out what role colonialism played in shaping the narrative surrounding Africa, African women and the African queer community.  Works mentioned:Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, The Thing Around Your Neck (4th Estate, 2009). Devon W. Carbado, ‘Privilege’ in Johnson, Patrick E., and Henderson, MAE G. (eds.) Black Queer Studies: A Critical Anthology (Duke University Press, 2005), pp. 190-212.Ifi Amadiume, Male Daughters, Female Husbands: Gender and Sex in an African Society (Zed, 1987).Sylvia Tamale, African Sexualities: A Reader (Pambazuka Press, 2011).Judith Butler, Who's Afraid of Gender? (Allen Lane, 2024).Franz Fanon, Black Skin, White Masks (Pluto Press, 1986).M. Epprecht ‘Africa and African Homosexualities: An Introduction’ in Murray, S. O. & Roscoe, W. (eds.) Boy-Wives and Female Husband: Studies in African Homosexualities (State University of New York Press, 1998), pp. 1-16.BBC Africa, Theresa May ‘deeply regrets’ UK’s colonial anti-gay laws (2018). Available at: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-43795440.Podcast intro and outro credits: Shield, Leroy, Taylor Holmes, and Robert W Service. The shooting of Dan McGrew. 1923. Audio. Retrieved from the Library of Congress.

What can fictional representations of blocked short story writers teach us about writer’s block and what causes a writer to feel blocked? I discuss these questions with Aaron Colton, Associate Teaching Professor and Director of First-Year Writing in the Department of English at Emory University in Atlanta. Aaron is the author of the book Writing Through Writer’s Block: Lessons from Modern American Fiction, published by the University of Iowa Press in 2025. Works mentioned:  Aaron Colton, Writing Through Writer’s Block: Lessons from Modern American Fiction (University of Iowa Press, 2025).Steven Pressfield, The War of Art: Break Through the Blocks and Win Your Inner Creative Battles (Black Irish Entertainment LLC, 2002).Elizabeth Tallent, Scratched: A Memoir of Perfectionism (Harper, 2020).Mike Rose (ed.), When a Writer Can’t Write: Studies in Writer’s Block and Other Composing-Process Problems (Guilford Press, 1985).Mike Rose, ‘Rigid Rules, Inflexible Plans, and the Stifling of Language: A Cognitivist Approach to Writer’s Block.’ College Composition and Communication 31, no. 4 (1980), pp. 389–401.Tillie Olsen, Silences, 25th edition (Feminist Press at CUNY, 2003).John W. Aldridge, Talents and Technicians: Literary Chic and the New Assembly Line Fiction (Scribner’s, 1992).Mark McGurl, The Program Era: Postwar Fiction and the Rise of Creative Writing (Harvard University Press, 2009).Lucy Ives, Loudermilk: Or, The Real Poet; Or, The Origin of the World. A Novel. (Soft Skull Press, 2019).Nam Le, ‘Love and Honor and Pity and Pride and Compassion and Sacrifice,’ in The Boat (Vintage, 2009), pp. 3-28.Ian Afflerbach, ‘On the Literary History of Selling Out: Craft, Identity, and Commercial Recognition’, in PMLA 137, no. 2 (2022), pp. 238–54. Andrew Martin, Early Work: A Novel (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2018). Andrew Martin, ‘No Cops’, in Cool for America: Stories (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2020).Podcast intro and outro credits: Shield, Leroy, Taylor Holmes, and Robert W Service. The shooting of Dan McGrew. 1923. Audio. Retrieved from the Library of Congress.

Paul March-Russell is the outgoing editor of Foundation: The International Review of Science Fiction, the co-founder of Gold SF, an intersectional feminist science fiction imprint of Goldsmiths Press, and the author of The Short Story: An Introduction for Edinburgh University Press. In this episode, Paul discusses the importance of women writers in science fiction and the legacy of the short story collection Women of Wonder (1974) edited by Pamela Sargent.  Works mentioned:Paul March-Russell, The Short Story: An Introduction (Edinburgh University Press, 2009). ‘Definitions of SF’, in The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction, ed. by John Clute and David Langford https://sf-encyclopedia.com/entry/definitions_of_sf.China Miéville, ‘Cognition as Ideology: A Dialectic of SF Theory’, in Red Planets: Marxism and Science Fiction, ed. by Mark Bould and China Miéville (Pluto Press, 2009), pp. 231-48.Pamela Sargent (ed.), Women of Wonder: Science Fiction Stories by Women about Women (Penguin, 1974).On Margaret Atwood’s ‘talking squid in outer space’, see David Barnett, ‘Science fiction: the genre that dare not speak its name’, The Guardian (28 Jan. 2009), https://www.theguardian.com/books/booksblog/2009/jan/28/science-fiction-genre Joanna Russ, ‘Nobody’s Home’, in Women of Wonder, ed. by Pamela Sargeant (Penguin, 1974), pp. 242-58. David Harvey, ‘Time–Space Compression and the Postmodern Condition’, in The Condition of Postmodernity (Blackwell, 1990), pp. 284-307. Tom Moylan, Demand the Impossible: Science Fiction and the Utopian Imagination (Peter Lang, 2014).Ursula K. Le Guin, ‘Vaster Than Empires and More Slow’, in Women of Wonder, ed. by Pamela Sargeant (Penguin, 1974), pp. 191-224.Robert Heinlein, ‘Waldo’, in Waldo & Magic, Inc (Macmillan, 1969). [See also Anne McCaffrey, ‘The Ship Who Sang’, in Women of Wonder, ed. by Pamela Sargent (Penguin, 1974), pp. 82-107.]‘Symposium: Women in Science Fiction’, Khatru 3/4 (1975), https://fanac.org/fanzines/Khatru/Khatru03.pdf.  Joanna Russ, ‘The Image of Women in Science Fiction’, in Images of Women in Fiction: Feminist Perspectives, ed. by Susan Koppelman Cornillon (Bowling Green University Popular Press, 1972), pp. 79-94.Joanna Russ, To Write Like a Woman: Essays in Feminism and Science Fiction, ed. by Sarah Lefanu (Indiana University Press, 1995).Lisa Yaszek, Galactic Suburbia: Recovering Women’s Science Fiction (Ohio University Press, 2008).Isaac Asimov, I, Robot (Harper Voyager, 2013).Kingsley Amis, New Maps of Hell: A Survey of Science Fiction (Arno Press, 1975).Martin Scofield, The Cambridge Introduction to the American Short Story (CUP, 2006).Edith Wharton, The Writing of Fiction (Touchstone, 1997).Pamela Zoline, ‘The Heat Death of the Universe’, in The Heat Death of the Universe and Other Stories (McPherson & Company, 1988), pp. 13-28. [Published in the UK as Busy about the Tree of Life (The Women’s Press, 1988).] E. J. Swift, When There Are Wolves Again (Quercus Publishing, 2025). Vonda L. McIntyre, Little Sisters and Other Stories (Gold SF, 2024).James Tiptree Jr., Warm Worlds and Otherwise (Penguin Classics Science Fiction, 2021).James Tiptree Jr. ‘The Women Men Don’t See’, in Warm Worlds and Otherwise (Penguin Classics Science Fiction), pp. 156-98.Ursula K. Le Guin, The Wind’s Twelve Quarters & The Compass Rose (Gollancz, 2015). Kit Reed, The Story Until Now: A Great Big Book of Stories (Wesleyan University Press, 2013).Other references:Foundation: The International Review of Science Fiction (Journal) https://www.sf-foundation.org/ Gold SF https://mitpress.mit.edu/series/goldsmiths-press-gold-sf/Podcast intro and outro credits: Shield, Leroy, Taylor Holmes, and Robert W Service. The shooting of Dan McGrew. 1923. Audio. Retrieved from the Library of Congress.

Alexander Manshel is Associate Professor of English at McGill University in Montreal (Canada). His research focuses on twentieth- and twenty-first-century American literature, multi-ethnic American fiction, and the cultural institutions that organize the contemporary literary field. How is contemporary short fiction in America influenced by the people and institutions that contribute to its production, circulation, and reception? Listen to find out!Works mentioned:  Alexander Manshel, ‘The Best of the Best: Anthologies, Prizes, and the Short Story Canon’, in The Cambridge Companion to the American Short Story, ed. by Michael Collins and Gavin Jones (Cambridge University Press, 2023), pp. 62-79.Charles E. May, ‘The American Short Story in the Twenty-First Century’ in Short Story Theories: A Twenty-First-Century Perspective, ed. by Viorica Patea (Rodopi, 2012), pp. 299-324. Perspective (Rodopi).Alexander Manshel, Writing Backwards: Historical Fiction and the Reshaping of the American Canon (Columbia University Press, 2023).Podcast intro and outro credits: Shield, Leroy, Taylor Holmes, and Robert W Service. The shooting of Dan McGrew. 1923. Audio. Retrieved from the Library of Congress.

(00:00:00) Intro (00:02:00) The Place to Find a Body (Ailsa Cox) (00:06:17) The Woman in the Tracksuit (Charlie Hill) (00:07:05) The Sunshine Skyway (Lauren C. Johnson) (00:13:53) New You (Shelley Roche-Jacques) (00:16:05) The Whites of Her Eyes (Molly Treweek) (00:21:58) Muguette (Elsa Court) (00:30:22) bill (Timothy Fox) (00:33:49) Spirits (Elizabeth Geoghegan) (00:37:01) Curtain Call (Niamh Swain) (00:43:24) A New Lease (Loghan Fellows) (00:45:29) Unbecoming (Sonya Moor) (00:50:09) She Will Sleep (Abi Millner) (00:53:05) The Man Who Walks Backwards (Charlie Hill) (00:54:12) Outro Ailsa Cox has published fiction in numerous magazines and anthologies, and twice been longlisted for the BBC National Short Story Award. You can read her latest story, “Poltergeist”, in The Manchester Review. Precipitation, a mini-collection in collaboration with the artist Patricia Farrell, is available from Confingo. Other books include Writing Short Stories (Routledge 3rd edition 2025) and, as co-author, Reading Alice Munro’s Breakthrough Books (EUP 2024).“The Place to Find a Body” was first published in Suzanne Bray and Gérald Préher (eds.), Tomorrow’s World/ Le Monde de demain, Biennale Ecoposs, FLSH, Lille, 2022.Elsa Court is a French-born writer and translator based in London. She holds a PhD in English Literature from UCL, and completed The Stinging Fly Advanced Fiction Workshop with Seán O'Reilly in 2019. Her stories and essays have appeared in Granta, American Short Fiction, The Los Angeles Review of Books, and The TLS, and she has translated essays and interviews for publications including the Financial Times and Another Gaze. She teaches Creative Writing at Birkbeck, University of London. “Muguette” originally appeared in Issue Four of Worms Magazine, a London-based publication championing new writing by women and nonbinary authors, in 2021.Loghan Fellows is a Sheffield-based writer and performer who enjoys writing short-form fiction and spouting long-form balderdash. He is currently in his final year of a Creative Writing undergraduate degree at Sheffield Hallam University. He can be found on Instagram under the dashingly original moniker of @loghanfellowswriter.Timothy Fox lives and writes in London. His chapbook every house needs a ghost was recently published by The Braag. It was a finalist for the Robert Phillips Poetry Chapbook Prize. His writing has appeared in, among others, The Molotov Cocktail, The Ghastling, Funicular Magazine and New Writing Scotland. In 2023, he was named a London Library Emerging Writer.Elizabeth Geoghegan was born in New York, grew up in the Midwest, and lives in Rome. She is the author of two short story collections eightball and Natural Disasters, and the bestselling memoir The Marco Chronicles. Her work has appeared in The Paris Review, The Best Travel Writing, TIME, El Pais, Words Without Borders, BOMB, and elsewhere. “Spirits” is forthcoming in an anthology of writing about Naples in conjunction with the Giancarlo DiTrapano foundation.Charlie Hill is a writer from Birmingham. His work has appeared in publications such as Ambit, Stand, The Lonely Crowd, Confingo, Riptide and the Manchester Review, featured in songs and been taught in South Australian schools. “The Man Who Walked Backwards” first appeared in a pamphlet and “The Woman at the Bustop” in the online magazine Spelk. They were later included in Charlie’s second collection Encounters With Everyday Madness, which was shortlisted for the 2025 Edge Hill Prize.Lauren C. Johnson attributes her upbringing in Florida, America’s weirdest state, to her interest in the ecological and surreal. She lives in San Francisco, where she co-hosts Babylon Salon, a quarterly Bay Area reading series, and Club Chicxulub, a speculative reading and performance series. Her debut novel, The West Façade, is forthcoming from Santa Fe Writers Project on March 3, 2026. “The Sunshine Skyway” was first published on April 20, 2025, in The Sunlight Press.Abi Millner was born and raised in Dorset, England. She has completed a BA Hons degree and Masters degree in creative writing at Sheffield Hallam university, during which she discovered a love for short and flash fiction. She was shortlisted for the Bridport flash fiction prize in 2024 and her short story “Joy” was recently published in the Linen Press anthology Skeins. She lives in the Peak District with her husband and children.Sonya Moor is a French and British author and translator of short fiction. Her translation of Albertine Sarrazin’s The Crib and Other Stories is published by Cōnfingō, as is her collection The Comet and Other Stories. Her stories are widely published in literary reviews and anthologies, including Best British Short Stories 2024 and Best British Short Stories 2022, and recognised for awards such as the Cinnamon Literature Award, Seán O’Faoláin International Short Story Competition and Bridport Short Story Prize.Shelley Roche-Jacques’ work has appeared in magazines and journals such as The Boston Review, Litro, The Rialto and Brevity. Her poetry pamphlet Ripening Dark was published in 2015, followed by a collection of dramatic monologues, Risk the Pier, in 2017. Her work has been highly commended for the Bridport Prize for flash fiction and shortlisted for the Bath Flash Fiction Award and Wigleaf Top 50. Her current research is on flash fiction as a distinct literary form. She teaches Creative Writing at Sheffield Hallam University, where she is Course Leader for the BA Creative Writing programme. “New You” was first published in the Bridport Prize Anthology 2021 (Redciffe Press).Niamh Swain was born in Derbyshire and is currently in her second year of a BA Creative Writing at Sheffield Hallam University, which has sparked her love for short stories and flash fiction. She is an enthusiast of storytelling in all its forms, from novels to film to video games. The short story “Curtain Call”, like most of her work, is inspired by her love of the British comedy she was raised on. Part of her writerly mission is to inject that essence into as many genres as possible.Molly Treweek is a Leeds-based Creative who will be receiving her BA Hons Creative Writing degree from Sheffield Hallam University in June. She writes literary fiction and short stories exploring obsession and identity. Her poem “Just Nipping Out” was featured in The Flock Literary Magazine. You can find the rest of her short story “The Whites of Her Eyes” on her Instagram (Instagram) and Substack.Podcast intro and outro credits: Shield, Leroy, Taylor Holmes, and Robert W Service. The shooting of Dan McGrew. 1923. Audio. Retrieved from the Library of Congress.

Shelley Roche-Jacques is a poet, flash fiction writer and Senior Lecturer of Creative Writing at Sheffield Hallam University (UK). In this episode, Shelley will be our guide into the world of Flash Fiction. How can a writer mobilise the story world and create three-dimensional stories when all they have at their disposal is a few hundred words? Listen and find out!Works cited:Shelley Roche-Jacques, ‘Flash fiction as a distinct literary form: some thoughts on time, space, and context’, in New Writing 21:2 (2024), pp. 171-89.Kim Chinquee, 'Flash fiction, prose poetry and men jumping out of windows: searching for plot and finding definitions', in The Rose Metal Press Field Guide to Writing Flash Fiction, ed. by Tara L. Masih (Rose Metal Press, 2009), pp. 111-12.Tania Hersham, ‘Flash Fiction 2014 Judge’s Report’. The Birdport Prize, https://bridportprize.org.uk/.Ron Wallace, ‘Ron Wallace – Writers Try Short-Shorts', University of Wisconsin – English Department. https://dept.english.wisc.edu/wallace/?page_id=63. Accessed 26/10/2025. Frank O’Connor, The Lonely Voice: A Study of the Short Story (Melville House, 2011).Tony Williams, ‘Flash Fiction’, in The Handbook of Creative Writing, ed. by Steven Earnshaw (Edinburgh University Press, 2014), pp. 315-23. Amelia Gray, The Swan as Metaphor for Love, in Joyland (December 2012), https://joylandpublishing.com/uncategorized/swan-metaphor-love/. Accessed 26/10/2025. Tony Williams, ‘Gareth’, in All the Banans I’ve Never Eaten (Salt, 2012).Tania Hersham (editor), Fuel: An Anthology of Prize-Winning Flash Fictions Raising Funds to Fight Fuel Poverty (Tania Hersham Books, 2025). Robert Shapard and James Thomas (editors), Sudden Fiction (Gibbs M. Smith, 1986). James Thomas and Robert Scotellaro (editors), New Micro: Exceptionally Short Fiction (Norton, 2018). Websites:SmokeLong Quarterly: https://www.smokelong.com. Wigleaf: https://wigleaf.com. Bath Flash Fiction Award Archive, https://www.bathflashfictionaward.com/tag/flash-fiction/. Bath Flash Fiction Award Anthologies, https://www.bathflashfictionaward.com/tag/flash-fiction-anthologies/.Podcast intro and outro credits: Shield, Leroy, Taylor Holmes, and Robert W Service. The shooting of Dan McGrew. 1923. Audio. Retrieved from the Library of Congress.

Nicholas Royle is a short story writer, a novel writer, the editor of the Best British Short Stories series. In this episode, I get to chat with him about his latest collection of short stories, Paris Fantastique (Confingo), and about his passion for second-hand books. Nicholas is also the founder of Nighjar Press, which publishes individual short stories as limited-edition chapbooks. Listen to find out more!Works mentioned:Nicholas Royle, Paris Fantastique (Confingo Publishing, 2025). Nicholas Royle, Manchester Uncanny (Confingo Publishing, 2022). Nicholas Royle, London Gothic (Confingo Publishing, 2020). Nicholas Royle, Antwerp (Serpent’s Tail, 2005).Nicholas Royle (editor), The Best British Short Stories 2025 (Salt, 2025).Nicholas Royle, White Spines: Confessions of a Book Collector (Salt, 2021).Nicholas Royle, Shadow Lines: Searching for the Book beyond the Shelf (Salt, 2024).C. D. Rose, ‘I’m in Love with a German Film Star’, in Walter Benjamin Stares at the Sea, (Melville House, 2024). Joel Lane, The Foggy, Foggy Dew (1986). Alberto Manguel (editor), Black Water: An Anthology of Fantastic Literature (Picador, 1983). Shelley Jackson, The Melancholy of Anatomy (Anchor Books, 2002). Jamaica Kincaid, ‘Blackness’, in At the Bottom of the River (Picador, 1984).Confingo publishing: PARIS FANTASTIQUE by Nicholas Royle | confingoPodcast intro and outro credits: Shield, Leroy, Taylor Holmes, and Robert W Service. The shooting of Dan McGrew. 1923. Audio. Retrieved from the Library of Congress.

Scott Setrakian is the president of the William Saroyan Foundation. At the time we recorded this interview, he had just come back from Armenia, where he had taken part in a seven-day event called Saroyan Days. In this episode, he tells me about the life and works of Armenian American short story writer William Saroyan. Saroyan’s is a story of determination, perseverance, Pulitzer Prices, Academy Awards, and (above all) of superb writing!  Work mentioned:  William Saroyan, The Daring Young Man on the Flying Trapeze (Faber and Faber, 2024). William Saroyan, ‘The Pomegranate Trees’, in The Atlantic (February 1938). William Saroyan, Letters from 74 rue Taitbout (World Publishing Company, 1969). William Saroyan, The Human Comedy (Harcourt, Brace, 1943) William Saroyan, The Bicycle Rider in Beverly Hills (Scribner, 1952) William Saroyan, Places Where I’ve Done Time (Davis-Poynter, 1973) William Saroyan, Where the Bones Go (Pr at California st, 2002)  William Saroyan Foundation website: William Saroyan FoundationPodcast intro and outro credits: Shield, Leroy, Taylor Holmes, and Robert W Service. The shooting of Dan McGrew. 1923. Audio. Retrieved from the Library of Congress.

Ailsa Cox is a professor Emerita at Edge Hill University (UK) and a short story writer. In this second part of the interview we discuss famous pieces of short story writing advice like “show don’t tell”, the Freitag pyramid, ending with a moment of insight and much more! Listen to find out what is a fact and what is fiction!  Works mentioned:  Sarah Hall, ‘Sarah Hall on why we should have a short story laureate’, Guardian, Oct. 11 2013, https://www.theguardian.com/books/2013/oct/11/sarah-hall-short-story-laureate. George Saunders, A Swim in a Pond in the Rain (Bloomsbury, 2021). Katherine Mansfield, ‘At the Bay’, in Selected Stories (Oxford University Press, 2002). Ailsa Cox, ‘How Loud the Birds’, in Katherine Mansfield and The Garden Party and Other Stories, ed. by Gerri Kimber and Todd Martin (Edinburgh University Press, 2022), pp. 143-52. Susan Lohafer, Reading for Storyness: Preclosure Theory, Empirical Poetics, & Culture in the Short Story (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003). C.D. Rose, Walter Benjamin Stares at the Sea (Melville House, 2024). Sarah Schofield, ‘Safely Gathered In’, in Safely Gathered In (Comma Press, 2021). Charles Baxter, ‘Against Epiphanies’, in Burning Down the House. Essays on Fiction (Graywolf Press, 1997), pp. 51-78. Chris Power, Survival of the smallest: the contested history of the English short story, New Statesman, 27 June 2017. Malachi McIntosh, Parables, Fables, Nightmares (Emma Press, 2023). Daisy Johnson, The Hotel (Penguin, 2024). Elizabeth Strout, Anything is Possible (Viking, 2017). Grace Paley, ‘A Conversation with My Father’,  The Collected Stories of Grace Paley (Farrar, Strauss & Giroux, 1994), pp.232-237 (minute 28-29) Paul March-Russell, The Short Story: An Introduction (Edinburgh University Press, 2009).  Writing on the Wall, https://writingonthewall.org.uk/.Podcast intro and outro credits: Shield, Leroy, Taylor Holmes, and Robert W Service. The shooting of Dan McGrew. 1923. Audio. Retrieved from the Library of Congress.

Ailsa Cox is a Professor Emerita at Edge Hill University (UK) and a short story writer. In this first part of the interview, we discuss famous claims about short stories and short story writing, like reading short stories in one sitting, the connection between short stories and poetic language, and much more. Listen to find out if they are facts or fiction!  Works cited: Ailsa Cox, Writing Short Stories. Third Edition (Routledge, 2025). Edgar Allan Poe, ‘The Philosophy of Composition’, in Essays and Reviews (Library of America, 1984) Leila Martin, Kodavision (Nightjar Press, 2025) Colm Tóibín, Mothers and Sons (Picador, 2006). Helen Simpson, Constitutional (Vintage, 2006). Allan Weiss, The Mini-Cycle (Routledge, 2021). Zoe Gilbert, Folk (Bloomsbury, 2018) Paul March-Russell, ‘Anthropocene feminism and the Weird temporalities of landscape’, Short Fiction in Theory and Practice, 15:1-2 (2025), pp. 81-95. Katherine Mansfield, ‘Bliss’, in Selected Stories (Oxford University Press, 2002). Janice Galloway, Blood (Vintage, 1991). Raymond Carver, ‘Fires’, in Call If You Need Me (The Harvill Press, 2000), pp.  93-106. Alice Munro, Runaway (Chatto & Windus, 2005).Nightjar Press, https://nightjarpress.weebly.com/Podcast intro and outro credits: Shield, Leroy, Taylor Holmes, and Robert W Service. The shooting of Dan McGrew. 1923. Audio. Retrieved from the Library of Congress.

Andrew Levy is professor of English and Creative Writing and the Edna Cooper Chair of English at Butler University in Indiana (USA). In this episode, I get to ask him a few questions about his book The Culture and Commerce of the American Short Story (Cambridge UP, 1992), a real watershed in short story criticism.Works referenced (in order of appearance)  Andrew Levy, The Culture and Commerce of the American Short Story (Cambridge University Press, 1992). Edgar Allan Poe, ‘Nathaniel Hawthorne’, in Essays and Reviews, ed. by G. R. Thompson (The Library of America, 1984), pp. 568-88. Edgar Allan Poe, ‘The Tell-Tale Heart’, in The Penguin Complete Tales and Poems of Edgar Allan Poe (Viking, 2011), pp. 216-20. Edgar Allan Poe, ‘The Philosophy of Composition,’ in Essays and Reviews, ed. by G. R. Thompson (The Library of America, 1984), pp. 13-25. John Cheever, ‘The Swimmer,’ in A Vision of the World: Selected Stories, ed. by Julian Barnes (Vintage, 2021), pp. 241-56. Ruth Suckow, ‘The Short Story’, Saturday Review of Literature 4.17 (1927), pp. 317-18. Percival Everett, James (Doubleday, 2024).Andrew Levy, Huck Finn's America: Mark Twain and the Era That Shaped His Masterpiece (Simon and Schuster, 2015).Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (Penguin Classics, 2006). Jocelyn A. Chadwick, The Jim Dilemma: Reading Race in Huckleberry Finn (University Press of Mississippi, 1998). Ralph Wiley, Spike Lee’s Huckleberry Finn, (unpublished screenplay) © copyright Ralph Wiley, 1997. Kelly Link, ‘Skindler’s Veil’, in When Things Get Dark: Stories Inspired by Shirley Jackson, ed. by Ellen Datlow (Titan Books, 2021).Podcast intro and outro credits: Shield, Leroy, Taylor Holmes, and Robert W Service. The shooting of Dan McGrew. 1923. Audio. Retrieved from the Library of Congress.

How does the short story form contribute to our understanding of life and the world? To find out, listen to this episode of the podcast, in which I get to interview prof. Michael Basseler, from Justus-Liebig University, author of the monograph An Organon of Life Knowledge: Genres and Functions of the Short Story in North America.Works cited:Michael Basseler, An Organon of Life Knowledge: Genres and Functions of the Short Story in North America (Transcript Verlag, 2019).Ottomar Ette, ‘Literature as Knowledge for Living, Literary Studies as Science for Living’, PMLA 125.4 (2010), pp. 977-93.Charles Baxter, ‘Against Epiphanies’, in Burning Down the House. Essays on Fiction. (Graywolf Press, 1997), pp. 51-78. Sherwood Anderson, ‘I Want to Know Why’, in The Triumph of the Egg (W. B. Huebsch, 1921). Washington Irving, ‘Rip Van Winkle’, in The Legend of Sleepy Hollow and Other Stories (Penguin, 2014).Zach Williams, Beautiful Days (Penguin, 2024).Podcast intro and outro credits: Shield, Leroy, Taylor Holmes, and Robert W Service. The shooting of Dan McGrew. 1923. Audio. Retrieved from the Library of Congress.

In this episode I get to interview Heuijung Hur on her collection Failed Summer Vacation, which has recently been published in English by Scratchbooks. Listen to Heuijung talk about her favourite stories in the collection and what it feels like to read her own work in translation.Works cited:Heuijung Hur, Failed Summer Vacation, trans. by Paige Aniya Morris (Scratchbooks, 2025).George Saunders, Tenth of December (Bloomsbury, 2013).Han Yujoo, The Impossible Fairy Tale, trans. by Janet Hong (Graywolf Press, 2017). Gu Byeong-mo, The Old Woman with a Knife, trans. by Chi-Young Kim (Canongate Books, 2022). Kim Jiyoung, Born 1982, trans. by Jamie Chang (Scribner, 2016). Ivan Turgenev, First Love, trans. by Isaiah Berlin (Penguin Classics, 2004).Podcast intro and outro credits: Shield, Leroy, Taylor Holmes, and Robert W Service. The shooting of Dan McGrew. 1923. Audio. Retrieved from the Library of Congress.

Michael Collins is Reader in American Studies at King’s College, London and co-editor of the Cambridge Companion to the American Short Story (2024). In this episode, I ask him why the short story is so popular in the US and yet relatively underrepresented in academic research.  Works cited:Michael J. Collins, The Drama of the American Short Story, 1800-1865 (University of Michigan Press, 2016).Michael J. Collins, “Introduction”, in The Cambridge Companion to the American Short Story (Cambridge University Press, 2024). Michael J. Collins and Gavin Jones (eds.) The Cambridge Companion to the American Short Story (Cambridge University Press, 2024). Frank Norris, ‘An Opening for Novelists. Great Opportunities for Fiction-Writers in San Francisco’, in Novels and Essays, ed. by Donald Pizer (The Library of America, 1986), pp. 1112-14. Bret Harte, ‘The Rise of the “Short Story”’, The Cornhill Magazine, 7.37 (1899), pp. 1-8. Walter Benjamin, “The Storyteller”, in Illuminations, ed. by Hannah Arendt, trans. by Harry Zohn (Schocken Books, 1968). Edgar Allan Poe, ‘The Masque of the Red Death’, in Poetry and Tales (Library of America, 1984). Eric D. Walrond, Tropic Death (Liveright, 2013).Studies in the American Short Story, (https://scholarlypublishingcollective.org/psup/sass)Podcast intro and outro credits: Shield, Leroy, Taylor Holmes, and Robert W Service. The shooting of Dan McGrew. 1923. Audio. Retrieved from the Library of Congress.

In this two-part episode, I have the privilege of chatting about Lucia Berlin’s short fiction with writer (and Lucia Berlin’s personal friend) Elizabeth Geoghegan. In the first part, Elizabeth tells me how she met Lucia Berlin and what kind of teacher she was; we also discuss the story “Angel’s Laundromat”. In the second part of the episode, I ask Elizabeth about the stories “A Manual for Cleaning Women,” “So Long,” and “Carmen”. A very special thank you to David Berlin and the Lucia Berlin Estate for allowing me to include two clips of Lucia Berlin reading “Angel’s Laundromat”. You can listen to the whole reading on Soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/readlucia/lucia-berlin-angels-laundromat  Works mentioned (in order of appearance): Elizabeth Geoghegan, eightball (SFWP, 2019) Elizabeth Geoghegan, Natural Disasters (She Writes Press, 2014) Elizabeth Geoghegan, The Marco Chronicles (SFWP, 2023) Lucia Berlin, Welcome Home: A Memoir with Selected Photographs and Letters (Picador, 2018) Stories from Lucia Berlin’s A Manual for Cleaning Women (Picador, 2015)  - “Here It Is Saturday” - “Angel’s Laundromat” - “A Manual for Cleaning Women” - “So Long” - “Grief” - “Mama” - “Carmen” - “Unmanageable”Podcast intro and outro credits: Shield, Leroy, Taylor Holmes, and Robert W Service. The shooting of Dan McGrew. 1923. Audio. Retrieved from the Library of Congress.

In this two-part episode, I have the privilege of chatting about Lucia Berlin’s short fiction with writer (and Lucia Berlin’s personal friend) Elizabeth Geoghegan. In the first part, Elizabeth tells me how she met Lucia Berlin and what kind of teacher she was; we also discuss the story “Angel’s Laundromat”. In the second part of the episode, I ask Elizabeth about the stories “A Manual for Cleaning Women,” “So Long,” and “Carmen”. A very special thank you to David Berlin and the Lucia Berlin Estate for allowing me to include two clips of Lucia Berlin reading “Angel’s Laundromat”. You can listen to the whole reading on Soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/readlucia/lucia-berlin-angels-laundromat  Works mentioned (in order of appearance): Elizabeth Geoghegan, eightball (SFWP, 2019) Elizabeth Geoghegan, Natural Disasters (She Writes Press, 2014) Elizabeth Geoghegan, The Marco Chronicles (SFWP, 2023) Lucia Berlin, Welcome Home: A Memoir with Selected Photographs and Letters (Picador, 2018) Stories from Lucia Berlin’s A Manual for Cleaning Women (Picador, 2015)  - “Here It Is Saturday” - “Angel’s Laundromat” - “A Manual for Cleaning Women” - “So Long” - “Grief” - “Mama” - “Carmen” - “Unmanageable”Podcast intro and outro credits: Shield, Leroy, Taylor Holmes, and Robert W Service. The shooting of Dan McGrew. 1923. Audio. Retrieved from the Library of Congress.

In this episode, Prof. Irwin Streight (Royal Military College of Canada) discusses the unexpected legacy of short story writer Flannery O'Connor on popular singers and songwriters such as Bruce Springsteen, U2, Lucinda Williams, and Nick Cave.Works mentioned (in order of appearance):  Lucinda Williams, “Get Right With God”, from Essence (Lost Highway, 2001). Searching for the Wrong-Eyed Jesus, dir. by Andrew Douglas (UK, USA, 2003). Borat, dir. by Larry Charles (USA, 2006). Irwin Streight, Flannery at the Grammys (University Press of Mississippi, 2024). Bruce Springsteen, The River (Columbia, 1980). Bruce Springsteen, Nebraska (Columbia, 1982). Bruce Springsteen, Devils & Dust (Columbia, 2005). Bruce Springsteen, The Ghost of Tom Joad (Columbia, 1995). Bruce Springsteen, Western Stars (Columbia, 2019).Bruce Springsteen, Born to Run (Simon & Schuster, 2016).U2, The Joshua Tree (Island, 1987). Mary Gauthier, “Wheel Inside the Wheel”, from Mercy Now (UMG Recordings, 2005). Nick Cave, Carnage (Goliath, 2021). Nick Cave, And the Ass Saw the Angel (Harper Collins, 1989).Warren Zanes, Deliver Me From Nowhere: The Making of Bruce Springsteen's Nebraska (Crown, 2023).Mark McGurl, The Program Era: Postwar Fiction and the Rise of Creative Writing (Harvard University Press, 2009).  O'Connor’s stories mentioned:From A Good Man is Hard to Find (Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1955): - “A Good Man Is Hard to Find” - “Good Country People”From Everything That Rises Must Converge (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1965): - “Greenleaf” - “Parker’s Back” - “Revelation” - “Judgement Day” - “Everything That Rises Must Converge”Podcast intro and outro credits: Shield, Leroy, Taylor Holmes, and Robert W Service. The shooting of Dan McGrew. 1923. Audio. Retrieved from the Library of Congress.

Meet Tom Conaghan, founder of Scratch Books! In this episode, I ask Tom what it takes and what it's like to run a publisher entirely dedicated to short fiction. Find out more about the origins of Scratch Books, their amazing publications and short story competition!Works cited (in order of appearance):John Cheever, “Reunion”, in A Vision of the World: Selected Stories, ed. by Julian Barnes (Vintage, 2021), pp. 199-203. Reverse Engineering, ed. by Tom Conaghan (Scratch Books, 2022). Reverse Engineering II, ed. by Tom Conaghan (Scratch Books, 2022). Gaston Bachelard, The Poetics of Space, trans by. Maria Jolas (Beacon Press, 1969). Conversations with David Foster Wallace, ed. by Stephen J. Burn (University Press of Mississippi, 2012). Yiyun Li, Wednesday’s Child (Farrar, Strauss and Giroux, 2023). Lydia Davis, “The Cornmeal”, in Can’t and Won’t (Farrar, Strauss and Giroux, 2014), p.33.  Louis MacNeice, “Snow”, in Collected Poems (Faber&Faber, 2015). Tessa Hadley, After the Funeral (Penguin, 2023).  Organisations mentioned:Scratch A4: https://www.scratch-books.co.uk/scratcha4competition The word factory: https://thewordfactory.tv/ City Lit: https://www.citylit.ac.uk/Podcast intro and outro credits: Shield, Leroy, Taylor Holmes, and Robert W Service. The shooting of Dan McGrew. 1923. Audio. Retrieved from the Library of Congress.

Intro credits: Shield, Leroy, Taylor Holmes, and Robert W Service. The shooting of Dan McGrew. 1923. Audio. Retrieved from the Library of Congress.