Reading the Short Story

Shruti Swamy, “Night Garden” Shruti Swamy   says that her story “Night Garden-- about a woman who watches her dog stare down a cobra a...

I wrote about this story when it first appeared in the New Yorker.   Here are some of my remarks: In McFarlane's story, the cent...

I feel guilty for neglecting my blog for the past several months.   I can only plead a variety of the usual reasons: other work commitme...

Elizabeth Strout’s Anything is Possible recently won the Story Prize, an annual book award “honoring the author of an outstanding collec...

One of my readers recently wrote: “I’m looking forward to reading your review of ’Cat Person.’ Will you write it?” Well, now that it h...

I recently read a book-length discussion of George Saunders’ Pastoralia by Charles Holdefer, the author of four novels and a collection...

In her speech on receiving the National Book Foundation Medal in 2014, Ursula Le Guin, who died this past week at the age of 88, scolded p...