Save the Short Story

The Story Prize is an annual award given to books of short fiction. This year, three finalists were selected from 78 short story collections. The winner will be announced on February 27 at The New School in New York City. The prize is $20,000 and a silver bowl with their name on it. Don’t all writers want a personalized silver bowl? I know I do.

The three finalists are:

Sunstroke and Other Stories by Tessa Hadley

Bloodletting & Miraculous Cures by Vincent Lam

Like You’d Understand, Anyway, by Jim Shepard, who just read for One Story last month. Click here to listen to the reading.

The three finalists will read selections from their work, followed by an author interview. The two runners up will go home with $5,000.

If you’re in the NYC area, you can get tickets to the show. The event will be held at the New School’s Tishman Auditorium (66 West 12th Street) at 7:30 pm on Feb. 27, go to SmartTix.com and search for “story prize” or make a reservation by calling the New School box office at 212-229-5488 Monday through Friday 1-7 pm or e-mailing them at boxoffice@newschool.edu.

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Today I discovered a new type of short-short story called a drabble. And by new, I mean that it is new to me, because apparently, the drabble has been around for decades, mostly in the world of science fiction fandom. What will those guys come up with next?

A drabble is a very short story that is exactly 100 words in length.

100 Word Stories is a site that posts a new topic every day. People can post their drabbles online and the prompts are pretty interesting.

Yesterday’s topic was: What’s wrong with the blood?

Today’s topic is: Red or White?

I say white. (And now I have to come up with 97 more words).

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Esquire.com publishes Last Line Articles, which features discussion topics chosen by a different author each week. This week, Chimamanda Adichie, author of One Story’s issue #27, Transition to Glory, discusses how she writes her stories.

“Big things” like race inspire me, but I am interested in writing about them in the smallest, most oblique way. I’m happily old-fashioned in my literary tastes, very keen on social realism, on fiction that is strong on character and place and has something to say about real things and real people without being preachy. Some of my favorite stories about race — by Brock Clarke, by James Alan McPherson — are serious and funny and sure but aren’t self-righteous.

The rest of Chimamanda Adichie’s article (and her super-adorable picture) can be found here.

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At the AWP two weeks ago as we were setting up for our reading, I turned to Marie and asked her if she had gone to any of the panels. She told me that she attended one on fraud.

I misheard her and said, “Frogs? There was a panel on frogs? That sounds fun.”

“No,” she said. “Fraud. Not Frogs.”

Although I think that it would be great to have one fun reading, just for the hell of it. I would call it: “Frogs Not Fraud.” It will feature short stories that have frogs in them. Of course, this could only be approved if I got really famous people involved. Like J.D. Salinger, maybe. You think he’ll be interested in coming out of hiding for this?

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Luminato, Toronto’s annual Festival of Arts and Creativity, is a 10-day arts and cultural extravaganza that will run from June 6 until June 15, 2008. I always think it’s cute when organizations tack on the “annual” label during its fledgling years. It’s so hope-filled.

This year, Luminato will be throwing its spotlight on The Festival of Short Stories. David Bezmozgis, author of Natasha and Other Stories, Dara Horn, author of The World to Come, Shyam Selvadurai, author of Funny Boy, Jaspreet Singh, author of Chef, along with other writers, will lead readings and discussions.

Luminato will also host a literary cabaret to launch TOK: Writing the New Toronto, Book 3, an anthology of short stories, poetry and drama created by Toronto writers. Sounds like a lot of fun.

Luminato Musical Side Note: Dan Zanes, who used to be the lead singer for the garage-band The Del Fuegos, will be creating a “Woodstock for Kids.” I’m not sure if kids need their own Woodstock. I am already disturbed whenever I see babies wearing their The Clash onesies. Babies, although very cute, are not punk rock. I only know of The Del Fuegos from the Juliana Hatfield song, “My Sister.”

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It was disheartening to read Zadie Smith’s blog entry on the Willesden Herald website. This year, the prize committee decided not to give out the Willesden Short Story Prize due to a lack of great submissions.

According to Ms. Smith:

This prize was created to support unpublished writers, and, with our five grand, we put our money where our mouths are…There is no entry fee, there are no criteria of age, race, gender or nation…Our sole criterion is quality.

She went on to say that it is because the prize committee has the integrity to not award the prize without a story that deserves it, that it has remained faithful to the short story.

People often ask One Story why we haven’t continued with our short story contests. The truth is, we are fearful of running into this exact problem. When I first took over as Managing Editor, Hannah and I sat down for lunch and went over the schedule of stories.

“So, how many stories do we have?” I asked.

Hannah looked off into the distance and said, “Well…Right now we don’t have anything, and we’re about two weeks behind schedule.”

I freaked out a little bit, said stuff like, “What!” and “What are we GOING to DO?”

Very calmly, she said,” Oh…Yeah…Here’s the thing. This happens every time.”

Great short stories are very special treasures. So let’s follow Zadie Smith’s advice, which is:

“…we also have our part to play. We also have to work out how to write better and read better…we have to be able to recognize its quality. We cannot love something solely because it has been ignored. It must be worthy of our attention.”

Her entire blog post can be read here.

The prize committee is going to re-award the cash prize next year–plus interest. So let’s make a commitment to write great short stories.

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One Story celebrated our 100th issue with a reading showcasing several of our authors (Brock Clarke, Nicole Kelby, Paul Yoon, and Ron Carlson) who read excerpts from their stories.

Galleycat posted a recording of the most memorable part of the reading — when the fire alarms went off while Nicole Kelby read Jubilation, Florida. Some people hurried out the door, but those who stayed got to see this.

Of course, in real life, the alarms were much LOUDER and the scene was not pixelated, but you get the idea.

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A few months ago, I picked up the new novel by Maxinne Swann. I had read several of her short stories in literary magazines and I admire her work, so I was curious to see how she would write a novel. At this point, I also want to note that I had hunkered myself down for a long read. With short stories, there’s a different expectation. With a novel, you need to prepare yourself to share a single storyline for several days, so you kind of have to shove things around in your mental space to make room for that.

I was really disappointed to discover that the novel was actually a collection of short stories. I checked the cover of the book to make sure that I hadn’t misread something, but it clearly states “A Novel” right there:

I felt that this was a case of misrepresentation. My opinion is that it’s fine to call a collection of stories “A Novel in Stories,” but to call it a novel is not right. I guess I can understand that from a marketing angle, it’s easier to try to sell a novel than a collection of short stories. However, I just don’t think that books need to be headlined as a novel. It would have been just as easy to leave out those two words above the title, but if the publisher is going to go ahead and do that sort of thing, then at least put the right description on it.

My friend Matt said, “That’s kind of funny, because I can just see you reading this ‘novel’ and saying to yourself, ‘Hey! I’ve already read half of this novel when they had been published as SHORT STORIES.’”

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