The Worst

by Emma Burns

The mandate was to tell the truth about my mother. I told the truth by coming at it in a lot of different ways. These short stories range from realistic to science fiction to fantasy but all come back to that essential truth. If you had a difficult (or impossible) relationship with your mother, these stories might help you come to terms with that. They might also be a springboard for you to tell your own stories and come to terms with your own truth.

106 pages, Paperback

First published December 7, 2024

About the author

Did you know I have a podcast? It's true! Look for Sacred Cheese of Life on Apple Podcasts, or go to http://emmaburns.org and click on Sacred Cheese of Life. You can also see a lot of essays about fiction on the Story on the Brain link.

My favorite things are reading, writing, watching things, and putting them all together to analyze fiction as a whole in a fun and energetic way in order to improve my own writing. Sacred Cheese of Life!

This refers to something Stephen Crane mentions in a very weird narrator comment in a short story called "The Open Boat," where he's mulling the meaning of life and how it's possible these people could just up and die when they're so close to shore. How is that fair? Are they getting yanked away just as they reach the sacred cheese of life? What on earth is he talking about there?

I think it's about all those things we love so much that they make life worth living. For me that's a lot of things, but life would be empty without fiction, for sure. So I love to dig into what makes fiction work and use that to improve my own writing.