Five Star Literary Stories

… is a very cool site I’ve written about before. They invite editors of online journals, or print journals with online content, to nominate a favorite story from their archives. When a story is chosen, the editor introduces both the journal and the story, and a guest reviewer writes a short review, followed by a short bio. So you get introduced to a journal you may not know, and likely two writers as well. And it’s all about celebrating great short stories.

This month, I review Raleigh Holiday’s “Artificial Light,” a story published in Wag’s Revue.

Dylan Landis

Last night I went to a wonderful reading at Diesel Bookstore in Brentwood: Dylan Landis, reading from her new novel-in-stories, Normal People Don’t Live Like This. As a writer working on a novel-in-stories myself, one also centered on a difficult and complicated female character, and who’s been exposed to some of Dylan’s work, I have been keenly awaiting the arrival of this book.

Dylan read from the story “Underwater,” which revolves around, among other things, a charged friendship between the main character, teen-aged Leah, and her bad-girl friend Angeline. When Angeline brags to other girls how smart Leah is, “Leah glows as if Angeline has put a match to her.” They have one kind of dynamic in a group: “but when they are alone together Angeline is a knife under folds of silk and Leah can’t look away.”

More on Normal People Don’t Live Like This after I’ve had a chance to read the book cover to cover. Some of the stories have been previously published in journals like Tin House, Bomb, Night Train, Santa Monica Review, and St. Petersburg Review. The book has been praised by writers like Janet Fitch (White Oleander) and Elizabeth Strout (the Pulitzer-winning Olive Kitteridge).

Five Chapters

One of my favorite new online journals, Five Chapters, each week serializes a new short story over five days. (This spring they moved to WordPress, with a much-improved design.) From the start, founder Dave Daley (a former Details editor) has attracted some impressive names. (More from Dave HERE in a good interview with Dan Wickett of the Emerging Writers Network.) They end the summer with a flurry: fifteen stories in fifteen days, starting today. Featured authors include Lori Ostlund (winner of this year’s Flannery O’Connor Prize), and Tod Goldberg (whose collection Other Resort Cities is due soon from Other Voices).

More Short Story News (2)

A word on numbering: A while back I had a post called Short Story News–followed up, later, by More Short Story News. I was going to label this post Still More Short Story News… but realized my post titles would soon enter the ranks of self-parody, with Son of Short Story News, Short Story News Strikes Back, and so on. So this is the third Short Story News posting–but the second More Short Story News. It’s kind of like the day you turn 39, you’re actually starting your 40th year. Or the argument by some purists that the new millenium started on Jan 1 2001. But this post is More Short Story News (2) and I’m standing by that.

• For a lover of short stories, what better heaven than someone who deigns a single short story worthy of a review? Five Star Literary Stories has been doing this for a while: they invite an editor of a literary journal to submit a story from their archives, recent or not, and introduce it; Five Star assigns an editor, who reviews it; a link to the full story is included. The reader is introduced, quite possibly, to a new story, a new writer, a new journal, and a new reviewer–all in a few quick keystrokes.
• Then my friend Sage Marsters (write that name down–her Pushcart Prize is just the beginning) tells me her story A Psychic, A Seizure, A Chair (how’s that for a title?) has been reviewed at The Delicate Rhino–which aims to, among other things, “record the experience of reading that story which got into your muscles.”
• Cliff Garstang offers many things at his Perpetual Folly blog: including capsule reviews of every short story published by the New Yorker. (Cliff has his own collection, In An Uncharted Country, coming out soon on Press 53.)
• I’ve been making a point of plugging the commitment of indies Dzanc and Press 53 to the short story–but let’s give it up as well to Harper Perennial and Fifty-Two Stories, their story-a-week site featuring selections from upcoming collections from current writers like Alex Burnett and Dennis Cooper–and rediscovered collections from Dostoyevsky, Tolstoy, Crane, Cather and Melville.
• Electric Literature is a new player on the litmag scene–making a big splash with a debut edition featuring Michael Cunningham, Jim Shephard and Lydia Millet; and a serious commitment to paying writers real money. Check them out. And by taking them up on their variously affordable options (paperback, Kindle, ebook and Iphone), prove them correct on their gamble of paying good writers good money for good stories. (Thanks to Book Fox for first bringing my attention to this new venture.)
• Perfect for summer-shortened attention spans: the August submission period for WW Norton’s projected 2010 anthology of “hint” fiction. Yes, there’s sudden fiction, quick fiction, flash fiction–and now hint fiction: stories of 25 words or less that tell a complete story, yet hint at a larger one.
• A reminder… LA’s live introduction to the best of new West Coast short fiction: the New Short Fiction Series, which this Friday features the stories of Jill Glass.
• Each month, The Short Review presents a new set of reviews devoted exclusively to short story collections–which this month includes my review of the anthology Visiting Hours.
• Finally, don’t forget a number of worthy short-story blogs: from The Short Review, American Short Fiction, and One Story among others.

And a late p.s… I just read word of an Esquire fiction contest that looks interesting.  It opened up May 1, deadline Aug 1.  Write a story based on one of three titles:  “Twenty-Ten,” “An Insurrection,” or “Never, Ever Bring This Up Again.”  Details here.

Book Party

I discovered a new reading series last night (new to me, relatively new to LA) called Book Party, that (mostly) convenes on the 2nd Sunday of the month, at Mandrake, an easy-to-miss bar at 2692 South La Cienega in Culver City. Started in October of last year, the series has already welcomed writers like Aimee Bender, Chris Abani and Rob Roberge. Last night’s show featured J. Ryan Stradal and poet Patty Seyburn (who was so good I bought her latest, Hilarity).

The bar is small but does a nice job with the show. They have a separate room for such events behind the bar, with plenty of seating, and a small outdoor patio beyond that. One minute it’s loud and everyone’s drinking; then they cut the music, pretty much everyone files in and takes a seat, and the reading begins. A dj spins tunes during a short break. It was a good crowd–nearly 30 people.

They’re taking the summer off, but will be back in style in September with Richard Lange (whose story collection Dead Boys wowed critics and helped win him a Guggenheim) with his first novel, This Wicked World.

Random Notes

• Sunday 6/21 7pm, writing group mate J. Ryan Stradal reads at Book Party–a reading series I’m unfamiliar with, at the Mandrake Bar (2692 La Cienega in Culver City).

• Sunday 6/28, the New Short Fiction Series (LA’s ‘live literary magazine’) and Other Voices (formerly a top-notch literary journal, and now, as part of the Dzanc family, publisher of fine books) co-sponsor an evening of readings from Billy Lombardo’s How To Hold a Woman and Gina Frangello’s Slut Lullabies–wine & hors d’oeuvres at 7pm, readings at 7:30–at LIME Studios, 1528 20th Street, Santa Monica.

• Theatre 68 in Hollywood rolls on with their 13 By Shanley series, an ambitious rotation of 13 plays by Pulitzer- and Oscar-winning writer John Patrick Shanley (don’t be put off if you were, as I was, disappointed with the film version of Doubt), now extended through Aug. 16: I can personally vouch for the Deborah Geffner-directed Beggars in the House of Plenty, Shanley’s most autobiographical play. Check out this don’t vote-style promo on YouTube.

• The PEN Center Emerging Voices fellowship program is accepting applications through Aug. 14–the program provides supportive but rigorous mentoring for emerging voices from a culturally diverse background.

• Friend and Pushcart Prize-winner Sage Marsters (a writer to watch out for) has a new story online at Open Letters (a new journal to me) called Yellow–aspiring writers would do well to observe how Sage adeptly packs her stories with telling details.

• Long-time mentor and popular UCLA Writer’s Program instructor Lou Mathews has a new story, “At the DMV,” in the most recent issue of Short Story, one of my favorite literary journals.

More Short Story News

You may not have realized it, but the month just ending as I type this has been National Short Story Month. Yet another initiative from Dan Wickett of the Emerging Writers Network, and in only its third year, the month is designed to generate interest in a form too often relegated to the margins–much as the more established National Poetry Month has done in April. Though I’m late in stepping in to plug it, this is the internet: so follow the link and spend some time reading some of the (literally) dozens of posts from the last month, some from Dan, others from guest bloggers, profiling both collections and individual stories. There are also a number of links to various websites that, unlike LS, participated vigorously. Tania Hershman also did a great job of promoting the month, both at her own blog and at The Short Review. (I promise to do better next year.)

As previously noted, the online journal storySouth is the engineer of what they call the Million Writers Award, an effort to recognize the most notable online short stories of the previous year. Dozens of stories were deemed notable (find them here, complete with links). Of these, ten finalists have been named–follow the link to read them and vote for the top prizes.  (Voting runs through June 17.)

Have Your Cake…

This afternoon I picked up the Dave Eggers-edited Best American Nonrequired Reading 2008. It includes Patrick Tobin’s “Cake,” the title story of his New Short Fiction Series show taking place tomorrow night, 8pm at the Beverly Hills Public Library.

I just finished reading it, and wish I’d got to it sooner. It’s a helluva story, walking a tightrope between dark and comic that’s hard to pull off, and which I surely have never managed myself. It will be performed by the amazing actress Deborah Geffner (All That Jazz and many other things), along with several other of Patrick’s stories.

Plus, Patrick is bringing a homemade cake… so yeah, you’ll be able to have your cake…

News from New Short Fiction Alums

The New Short Fiction Series monthly showcases the fiction of West Coast writers, performed by local actors of screen & stage. The Series has in the past featured notable writers such as Aimee Bender, Tod Goldberg, and Gina Ochsner. Here’s what some recent alums have been up to:

• storySouth’s Most Notable Online Stories 2008 includes both Alicia Gifford (‘08) for her story “Lobster Girl” in Smokelong Quarterly; and Thaila Ramanujam (‘09) for her story “Life is Awesome” in Cha (which won for best new online magazine)
• Laila Lalami (‘06) is out with her first novel, Secret Son (she is previously the author of the collection Hope & Other Dangerous Pursuits), which she will be reading from at Skylight Books on Thurs May 14, 7:30
• and Larry Fondation (twice featured) will be part of Skylight’s “LA Noir” night Thurs May 7, 7:30

This Friday, May 8 at 8pm, the Series presents “Cake & Other Stories” by Patrick Tobin.

Is The Short Story Becoming Hip?

In noting, earlier this month, the appearance of major articles in both the New York Times and the Guardian on the short story (on the same day no less), Short Review editor Tania Hershman asked, “Have we slipped through a wormhole into another dimension?” Maybe not, but April was a good month for the short story:

• In the New York Times, A.O. Scott’s “In Praise of the American Short Story” acknowledges the commercial limitations of the form, but also warns against undervaluing it. The appearance of biographies of Flannery O’Connor, John Cheever and Donald Barthelme offers occasion to look back at 20th century masters. And Wells Towers’ new Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned (getting a lot of attention these days) “provides the most vivid recent example of the way a good story, or a solid collection of them, can do more than a novel to illuminate the textures of ordinary life and the possibilities of language.”
• In his Guardian piece, James Lasdun “celebrates growing confidence in an often overlooked form.” He does so with a tough look at five recent story collection debuts from around the world: the Wells Tower from America, but also authors from Ukraine, Pakistan, Nigeria, and Zimbabwe.
• The 2009 Pulitzer for Fiction, just announced, went to Elizabeth Strout for Olive Kitteridge, a collection of linked stories “set in small-town Maine that packs a cumulative emotional wallop, bound together by polished prose and by Olive, the title character, blunt, flawed and fascinating.”
• Finally, the online journal The Rumpus earlier this week premiered a new column by Peter Orner (Esther Stories) called The Lonely Voice focused on… the short story (and, of course, taking its name from Frank O’Connor’s classic study of the form). His plan is to check in every week or so with thoughts about a particular story. This week: Peter Taylor’s “Allegiance.”