May is National Short Story Month, so we’re celebrating the tail end of it by honoring some short stories of the past year that are deserving of your attention. Although these diverge from Geraldine Brooks’s choices in The Best American Short Stories collection or those contained in PEN/O. Henry Prize Stories, we encourage you to pick either or both of these up if you’re interested in more tales from notable authors. Or, if you want stories from our neighbors across the Atlantic, there’s always Best European Fiction, which was edited by one of our favorite writers, Aleksandar Hemon. But our list spans more than this continent or that of Europe — we wanted to tip the balance to include both emerging and established writers from countries all over the world (as well as those who live outside our fair coast). As Beyoncé queries in her latest call-and-response hit, “Who run the world?” (Girls). But you knew that already, didn’t you? So read on, dear readers, and tell us who we missed.
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Poised at the edge of a shiny new year, we’re readying ourselves for this season’s spate of hotly anticipated new titles. In its always-reliable season preview, The Millions noted that this “may be a year of new discoveries,” and, true to this prediction, we’re particularly excited to check out 2011’s roster of fresh talent. Here’s a peek at upcoming debut books by new authors, as well as new titles by established names — all ten of which will get tongues wagging and pages turning in the months ahead.
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Boundary-pushing author T.C. Boyle’s latest short-story collection offers a strong combination of varied genres and literary inquiries.
Though the 14 selected pieces in Wild Child and Other Stories have little to do with one another — apart from all sharing Boyle’s interrogative imagination — the book’s overall effect is like looking at a subtly distorted mirror. Stories range from the title piece’s un-sentimentalized retelling of the tale of a feral boy found in late 18th-century France to a Borges-worthy look at practical existentialism in “Sin Dolor” and the teardown of typical pet/owner relationships in “Thirteen Hundred Rats.”
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A Mark Twain for the Baby Boom generation, T.C. Boyle is a portraitist of human folly and fantasy. A prolific writer of both short stories and novels, Boyle recently published The Women, a fictional work about Frank Lloyd Wright, as told by four of his infamous amours. While on a national tour to promote the book, Boyle chatted with our sister publication Boldtype. After the jump, he tells Chelsea Bauch about his fascination with famous egomaniacs, being a mama’s boy, and the extent to which creative writing can be taught.
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Fairey-gate: In the latest twist in this street artist’s drama, Shepard Fairey announced yesterday that he was suing The Associate Press with the hope (get it!) that a judge would find his use of the now infamous Barack Obama photo did not violate copyright law. This is an interesting move because the AP wasn’t going to sue Fairey, they just wanted compensation/credit for their photographer. [Via Chicago Tribune]
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Michiko Kakutani calls Boyle’s new book
“a small, cheesy paint-by-numbers soap opera that manages to be pallid and gratuitously garish at the same time.”
Yikes!
