Short-Story Month 2012: Day 11, The Red Bow by George Saunders

by Zayed Hassan,

Used under CC license

"NEXT NIGHT, walking out where 

it happened, I found her little red bow.

I brought it in, threw it down on the 

table, said: My God my God."

Day 11
National

Short Story 

Month

Today's selection, by George Saunders, was originally published in Esquire, later anthologized in Not Normal, Illinois, a nominee for the Bram Stoker award, and winner of a National Magazine Award.  The story appears in Saunders's story collection, In Persuasion Nation.

But the story is more interesting than all that.

"The Red Bow" 

by George Saunders
(2009)

Short-Story Month 2012: Day 10, Mirrors by Carol Shields

Today's story selection

comes from a writer whose

line and work always

has a quiet patience to its

tone and content.  One of

the master writers of the

20th century who is most

known for her novels such

as the Pulitzer-Prize winning

Stone Diaries, Carol Shields.

"Untitled" by Daniel Oines,
Used under CC license

"From June to August they choose to forget who they are, or at least what they look like, electing an annual season of non-reflectiveness in the same way other people put away their clocks for the summer or their computers or door keys or microwave ovens."

Please, enjoy

 "Mirrors" 
by Carol Shields
(1996)

(Shields was originally from Illinois 

but later moved to Canada, so she's often 

thought of as a Canadian writer, but 

to this writer and also native of Illinois, 

Shields's concerns have always

seemed Midwestern.)

Box of Delights Anthology on Kindle

Aeon Press's Box of Delights, Cover
Winter 2011 - KINDLE VERSION

Box of Delights, edited by John Kenny and published out of Dublin, Ireland, is now available on the Kindle.

It may be National Short Story Month in the U.S., but if you want to make your celebration an international one,  try Box of Delights, an anthology of contemporary horror fiction by 16 writers around the world.  Her story, "The Lightning Tree", is one of those stories.

Box of Anthology writers 

(links follow to the writer's webpage)

Don D’Ammassa

Taylor Grant

Erik T. Johnson

Sean MacRoibin

Eleanor Marney

David Murphy

Robert Neilson

Erin Pringle

Steve Rasnic Tem

Mike Resnick

Kristine Kathryn Rusch

Craig Saunders

Priya Sharma

N.A. Sulway

John F.D. Taff 

Ian Wild

CLICK!

a) here for the U.S. Kindle edition of Box of Delights

b) here for the U.K. Kindle edition

c) here for a print copy of Box of Delights

Short-Story Month 2012: Day 9, Concerning Ghosts by Michael Stewart

"Fan" by Mike Schmid,
Used under CC license

"My ghosts move as trees age." 

National

Short

Story

Month 

Day 9.

                                          Selection.

                                                            "Concerning Ghosts" by 

Michael Stewart

Send Giants: Maurice Sendak Left Today

Photo by Michael M. Hughes, All Rights Reserved ,
used with photographer's permission

Send Giants:

An Elegy in 2012

May 8, 2012

Dear Mr. Sendak:

Please tell the lion that you care (even if you don't), and it will maybe let you come back. Speak very loudly because it's dark in there, and according to the newspapers, its mouth is shut tight. And this lion never gets sick when it eats. 


Or maybe we can send giants. They can shake you out. 

Then the newspapers can print a correction tomorrow, like they do and nobody catches the correction because they're not looking or don't even get the paper the next day and so they keep thinking the wrong thing the reporter wrote.  But I'll look for it. 

Your Friend,

Erin, age 5 30

*

From Pierre by
Maurice Sendak (June 10, 1928-May 8, 2012)

"I have nothing now but praise for my life. I'm not unhappy. I cry a lot because I miss people. They die and I can't stop them. They leave me and I love them more. ... What I dread is the isolation. ... There are so many beautiful things in the world which I will have to leave when I die, but I'm ready, I'm ready, I'm ready." 

---Maurice Sendak  

NPR interview with Terri Gross

(2011)

Short-Story Month 2012: Day 8, Roots by Chadwick Redden

"Ghost Trees" by Rosino,
Used under a CC license

Welcome to Tuesday, the eighth day of National Short Story Month.  Today's selection was recently published in the literary journal red lightbulbs, an increasingly exciting location for new and interesting poetry and fiction:




"We drove ninety miles south to watch the lunar eclipse. Light pollution and cloud cover all the way down. In a field your shoelaces forgot their knots . . ."

"Roots" 

by Chadwick Redden
(2011)

Short-Story Month 2012: Day 7, All the Anne Franks by Erik Hoel

"Lone Russian Bear" by jzool,
Used under CC license

She found today's selection for National Short Story Month a few years ago when she decided to nominate a story for the annual Million Writers Award and ran across this story in Strange Horizons:

"When the aliens came and cut the sky up into golden ribbons Dan Milestone ran inside to get his daughter Margaret and put her up on his shoulders in the front yard and told her that this was history and she told him to put her down because he was embarrassing her."

"All the Anne Franks" 

by Erik Hoel
(2009)

Short-Story Month 2012: Day 6, The Juniper Tree

by Paleontour,
Used under CC license

My Mama She Kil't Me

My Father He Ate Me

Oh, What a Good Boy Am I!

It's Day 6 of National Short Story month, and today's selection is the folk-story, 

"The Juniper Tree"

The following version is from the 1875 collection, German Popular Stories, edited by Edgar Taylor.

Click to 

continue reading 

The Juniper Tree! 

Short-Story Month 2012: Day 5, The Brewsters by Laura Ellen Scott

Room with a View by Rick Kempel,
Used under CC license

"We always called that rusty metal shack the Brewster house."

In continuing the celebration of National Short Story Month, today's selected story is this linguistic beauty:

"The Brewsters" 

by Laura Ellen Scott, 

from her collection Curio
(2011)

Short-Story Month 2012: Day 4, Diagnostic Drift by Michael Martone

Transparent by Kasia,
used under CC license

Since 1996, April has belonged to the poets.  But it has only been a few years, at least in her memory, that May has been unofficially officially declared National Short Story Month.

So, to celebrate the art of the short story, each day of May a story will be selected and posted at What She Might Think.

Since we're four days in, rather than catch up with four different stories, here's a lyrical short story in four parts:

 "Diagnostic Drift" by Michael Martone