MetaFilter posts tagged with ShortStories and stories

Storyreading

ocherdraco — Fri, 13 Mar 2009 10:06:55 -0800

A guide to Storyreading. "For over ten years now, various friends and I have been getting together on occasion to read stories aloud to each other. This activity—graced with the unlovely but utilitarian name "story reading"—can be a great deal of fun, but can also be rife with pitfalls of various sorts. This guide is an attempt to help others to run story readings. Note that reading stories is different from—and, generally, much easier than—telling stories; while people do occasionally tell stories at these gatherings (and it usually goes over well), that's not the primary emphasis...The origins of our approach to story readings are lost in the mists of antiquity. The idea may have sprung fully-fledged from a conversation I had with DH about a Delany essay called "On Pure Storytelling"; or it may've been derived from MK's reading The Princess Bride aloud, which in turn may've been inspired by folks at Yale who were doing much the same thing. Whatever the history, it's clear that other groups—notably one in Boston—have been having similar sorts of readings for at least as long as we have." Storyreading is essentially a bunch of people getting together and reading 8-10 page pieces, usually short stories (but also essays, or chapters from novels or nonfiction books). Want to start a storyreading group? Here are some places to find things to read:

A list of books read at the Yale group and its satellites
Literary journals: Glimmer Train, One Story, Ploughshares, and Zoetrope All-Story
Anthologies: The O. Henry Prize Stories, the Best American series, the Pushcart Prize Anthology
Collections of short fiction that have won the Story Prize
And, of course, the wonderful treasures of short fiction found by your fellow mefites

An addition to the advice given in the guide: it's nice to keep a wiki or other online list of the things your group has read, so you can go back and find them later. For flavor, some things recently read at my group include:

"A Signal in the Sky Said: Marry Her," by Ben Karlin, in the March 9, 2008 issue of The New York Times. Full text online here.
"The American Male at Age 10" by Susan Orlean, from The New Kings of Nonfiction, edited by Ira Glass
from Liberation by Brian Slattery
“All Seated on the Ground” by Connie Willis. Full text online here.
"My Affliction" by Gabrielle Bell. Self-published mini-comic later reprinted in Lucky Volume 2 #1.
"The Dubbing of General Garbage" from City Boy by Herman Wouk
from James Brown: Live at the Apollo by Douglas Wolk. Accompanied by the album.
from Celine Dion: Let's Talk About Love: A Journey to the End of Taste by Carl Wilson. Accompanied by the song.
"Excellent" from Rats: Observations on the History and Habitat of the City's Most Unwanted Inhabitants by Robert Sullivan
"My Uncle in the Garden" from Just An Ordinary Day by Shirley Jackson
from Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell by Susanna Clarke
from The Elfish Gene: Dungeons, Dragons and Growing Up Strange by Mark Barrowcliffe
from Paper Towns by John Green

Rosenbaum, The Plausible-Fabulist

ninebelow — Fri, 19 Sep 2008 07:13:41 -0800

Like others before him Benjamin Rosenbaum is making his debut short story collection, The Ant King And Other Stories, available from his publishers, Small Beer, as a free download. More than this though, he is holding a competition to find the best derivative work inspired by it. These include "translations, plays, movies, radio plays, audiobooks, flashmob happenings, horticultural installations, visual artworks, slash fanfic epics, robot operas, sequels, webcomics, ASCII art, text adventure games, roleplaying campaigns, knitting projects, handmade shoes, or anything else you feel like." Benjamin Rosenbaum is not a character from The Scarlett Pimpernel, a poet or a writer of children's books as 'Biographical Notes to 'A Discourse on the Nature of Causality, with Air-Planes', by Benjamin Rosenbaum' makes clear.

Write Me Stories

goodnewsfortheinsane — Tue, 15 Apr 2008 11:39:55 -0800

Paulo in London asks musicians to write him a story on an index card. For example, the Polyphonic Spree's Michael Musick and Bryan Wakeland, Arcade Fire's Richard Reed Parry, Jens Lekman, Sufjan Stevens, and the Flaming Lips' Wayne Coyne.

Story time

dersins — Mon, 30 Jul 2007 08:44:13 -0800

You should read these three stories by Amy Hempel. (Oh, and maybe listen to her read, here.) While you're at it, read some of these idiosyncratic but beautifully-written stories by grammarian Gary Lutz.

SECRET * BASILISK

thatwhichfalls — Sun, 07 Aug 2005 00:35:31 -0800

BLIT ,
a short story by David Langford.

Online SF Short Fiction

rainking — Sat, 25 Jan 2003 11:06:57 -0800

Online SF Short Fiction. It's good and it's free. Sci-Fiction is the biggest name in the online field, publishing many big name authors (This week's story is by Octavia E. Butler for instance) and winning several awards. (Also check out Swanwick's Periodic Table of Science Fiction while you're there). But there are more sources for good online SF: The Infinite Matrix, Strange Horizons and Infinity Plus (reprints) for instance. And let's not forget that all the print magazines have put their Nebula nominees online (though Analog's stories are coming up as 404s). Let the reading commence!