31 Days of Stories 2021, Day 17: “Julia and the Bazooka” by Anna Kavan
Kavan’s story is typical of her technical approach, which telescopes time and proceeds in a kind of modified stream-of-consciousness narration.
31 Days of Stories 2021, Day 16: “The Unfinished Novel” by Valerie Martin
Valerie Martin’s long story is about a poisonous artistic rivalry.
31 Days of Stories, Day 11: “Solitary” by John Edgar Wideman
The story is about the mother of an imprisoned son before, during, and after her bus trip to visit him.
31 Days of Stories 2021, Day 10: “Sweat” by Zora Neale Hurston
Hurston’s story contains the folk idiom for which she is known, as well as being a signal example of her concern with women overcoming abuse at the hands of men.
31 Days of Stories 2021, Day 9: “The Cloak” by Robert Bloch
Not a retread or homage, Bloch’s vampire story displays a momentum and technique typical of the author’s best work.
31 Days of Stories 2021, Day 8: “Toward Happy Civilization” by Samanta Schweblin; Megan McDowell, trans.
Samanta Schweblin’s story about paralysis and paranoia shares elements in common with Beckett and Kafka.
31 Days of Stories 2021, Day 6: “Still Life No. 41” by Teresa Solana; Peter Bush, trans.
Catalan writer Soldana offers an outrageous premise for a story that serves as an acerbic satire of entitlement and power.
31 Days of Stories 2021, Day 5: “Renaissance Man” by Maxim Osipov; Boris Dralyuk, trans.
A Moscow oligarch becomes involved with a redheaded soprano and an eleven-year-old boy in a tragedy from the contemporary Russian realist.
31 Days of Stories 2021, Day 3: “Boys Go to Jupiter” by Danielle Evans
Evans’s story deals with the fallout from a viral photo of a white woman in a Confederate flag bikini.
31 Days of Stories 2021, Day 1: “Helping” by Robert Stone
In this ironically titled story, the author examines subjects of addiction, masculine violence, and PTSD without ever resorting to easy didacticism.