Asked to write something for David Abrams’ fantastic lit blog, The Quivering Pen, for Short Story Month (or week, for the blog), I wrote about my first introduction to contemporary short fiction, Best American Stories 1998:
I still have it. I’ve reread it countless times. Its front cover has fallen off and there’s writing in the margins and sentences I’d run over with pink highlighter and exclamation marks all over the place. On some of the pages there are scribbles courtesy of an impatient toddler made to sit on my lap while I read. On the first page of Poe Ballantine’s story I’d written “HOLY SHIT” (the extent of my critical reading skills at the time) and that was pretty much how I felt about all the stories. Looking at the book now, I feel the same rush of joy I felt when I read it in 1998.
Read the entire article here: The Quivering Pen
And while you’re there read the great posts on the short story by Dawn Raffel, Darlin’ Neal, Eugene Cross, Bonnie Jo Campbell, and Alyson Hagy.