31 Days of Stories 2020, Day 24: “Sardonicus” by Ray Russell
Ray Russell's 1961 modern Gothic tale has lost none of its power to shock its reader.
31 Days of Stories 2020, Day 22: “Things to Do When You’re Goth in the Country” by Chavisa Woods
Chavisa Woods’s expressionistic story is about feeling like an outcast in the place you were born.
31 Days of Stories 2020, Day 21: “For Smokers Only” by Julio Ramón Ribeyro; Katherine Silver, trans.
Peruvian writer Julio Ramón Ribeyro’s semi-autobiographical story investigates the metaphysical pleasures a smoker finds in cigarettes.
31 Days of Stories 2020, Day 18: “Brutto” by Helen DeWitt
Helen DeWitt's story is about the fraught tension between artistic integrity and fame.
31 Days of Stories 2020, Day 17: “The Piazza” by Herman Melville
Herman Melville's tale is a story of disillusionment and thwarted idealism.
31 Days of Stories 2020, Day 13: “The Pugilist at Rest” by Thom Jones
Thom Jones’s most famous story is about one U.S. Marine before, during, and after deployment to Vietnam.
31 Days of Stories 2020, Day 12: “Slumming” by Ottessa Moshfegh
Ottessa Moshfegh uses humour to drive home a deadly serious point.
31 Days of Stories 2020, Day 11: “Planting” by Matsuda Aoko; Angus Turvill, trans.
Matsuda Aoko's story is a surrealistic allegory about the psychological fallout from the 2011 Japanese tsunami.
31 Days of Stories 2020, Day 9: “Wild Blue Yonder” by Jenny Diski
Jenny Diski's story is about female domestic confinement and the promise of a more fulfilling life.
31 Days of Stories 2020, Day 8: “A Piece of Flesh” by Varlam Shalamov; Donald Rayfield, trans.
Varlam Shalamov's intense short fiction provides an intense and unvarnished glimpse of life inside Stalin's Gulag.