Goodreads asked Mark Dostert:

What are you currently working on?

Mark Dostert Presently, I am working on 10 or so short stories set in 1990s Chicago--when I was a college student and later a juvenile jail guard there. Most of the stories will involve strangers of differing socioeconomic backgrounds coming into contact with each other--some by coincidence and some by intention. My plan is for half of them to be first person POV and half to be third person POV. Some of my mentor texts for this collection are 'Dubliners' by Joyce, 'Lost in the City' by Edward P. Jones, 'A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain' by Robert Olen Butler, 'War by Candlelight' by Daniel Alarcon, 'Come Together, Fall Apart' by Cristina Henriquez, and 'A Thousand Years of Good Prayers' by Yiyun Li. So far I have five stories beyond first draft. Two of them came close to acceptance at 'One Story.'

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