31 Days of Stories 2022, Day 24: “June Bugs” by Kim Fu
Fu’s three-part story fuses realism with fabulist elements.
31 Days of Stories 2022, Day 23: “The Journal” by Stanislaw Lem; Antonia Lloyd-Jones, trans.
A story that takes up philosophical questions about the nature of creation and the paradoxes inherent in a divine creator becomes a more straightforward SF tale in its final moments.
31 Days of Stories 2022, Day 22: “Raw Material” by A.S. Byatt
Byatt’s story, about a creative writing teacher and a promising older student, contains a submerged lesson about how to write worthwhile literature.
31 Days of Stories 2022, Day 21: “Theft” by Katherine Anne Porter
Porter’s suggestive and imagistic style lends her story an acute psychological insight.
31 Days of Stories 2022, Day 20: “Glory” by Janice Lynn Mather
This story, about a teenage girl sent to live with her grandmother during the final months of her pregnancy, is about a struggle between conflicting notions contained in the title.
31 Days of Stories 2022, Day 19: “Happy Birthday” by Clarice Lispector; Katrina Dodson, trans.
From the woman who many consider to be Brazil’s greatest writer, a story about the family party from hell.
31 Days of Stories 2022, Day 18: “A Man Becomes a Nazi” by Anna Seghers; Margo Bettauer Dembo, trans.
Seghers’s story, about the conditions necessary for an unhappy man to become radicalized, holds pressing lessons for our current historical moment.
31 Days of Stories 2022, Day 17: “Once Removed” by Alexander MacLeod
Like Alice Munro, MacLeod has the ability to build whole lives in a compressed space and to subtly shift a story’s focus and meaning without apparent effort.
31 Days of Stories 2022, Day 16: “A Cup of Cold Water” by Edith Wharton
Wharton’s story is an examination of the vacuity that attaches to the wealthiest strata of society and one man’s unsuccessful attempt to climb the social ladder.
31 Days of Stories 2022, Day 15: “Little Miss Marker” by Damon Runyon
Set in a mythical Depression-era New York City, the story centres on a bookie who becomes an unwitting father figure to a young girl who is offered as a marker on a bet.