21st Century Literature discussion

"The well-told story seems to answer something very deep in our nature as if, for the duration of its telling, something special has been created, some essence of our experience extrapolated, some temporary sense has been made of our common, turbulent journey towards the grave and oblivion." - William Boyd

Welcome to Briefs, our newest section dedicated to the short story form as practiced in the 21st century!

The idea is to explore the short story form by looking at a variety of 21st century examples. We'll likely be starting with individual selections that are already available online so that accessibility is never an issue and barriers to participation are as low as possible.

We're going to let this section develop organically and gauge interest over the next few months and see where it takes us. To start out, a new story will be introduced every few weeks (timing in between discussion and the introduction of new stories will be based on length of each story and discussion momentum; moderator involvement may also vary by particular story).

Some articles that may interest you if you're new to short stories or just want to read more about the form in general:
- What Makes the Short Story Distinctive? Writers Discuss the Story vs. the Novel
- A Short History of the Short Story
- A Single & Unique Effect: In Praise of the Short Story
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STORIES WE'VE READ (listed most- to least-recent; links take you to the discussion post)

- The River of Lost Souls by Isabel Greenberg
- Magic Arrow by Chance Dibben
- Sussex, Essex, Wessex, Northumbria by Brandon Taylor
- Africanfuturist 419 by Nnedi Okorafor
- The Great Silence by Ted Chiang
- Stone Animals by Kelly Link
- Cookie Jar by Stephen King
- Skinned by Lesley Nneka Amirah
- How to Win by Daisy Johnson
- True Milk by Aixa de la Cruz
- Borderland by Olga Tokarczuk
- The Sweet Sop by Ingrid Persaud
- Zog 19: A Scientific Romance by Pinckney Benedict
- Passage by Kevin Jared Hosein
- Sticks by George Saunders
- The Husband Stitch by Carmen Maria Machado
- Swimmer of the Yangtze by Yiming Ma

As a regular contributor to discussions over at http://mookseandgripes.com of short stories published by The New Yorker, I am fully on board for this section. People who enjoy this section should pop over there for a visit from time to time, as there are new discussions of New Yorker stories every week as they are published.

David wrote: "As a regular contributor to discussions over at http://mookseandgripes.com of short stories published by The New Yorker, I am fully on board for this section. People who enjoy this section should p..."

Thanks for letting us know about this, David--I'm all for cross-pollinating the groups and discussions!

I'm excited about this! I love short stories, though I don't read them as often as I'd like. I find they can be great palate cleansers in between books - especially if I'm still craving something to read but not quite ready to invest in something entirely new yet. I don't mean to diminish the power of a good short story though - the images and concepts of a well crafted story can often stick with me far longer than a novel that has pages of background and description.

I'm not sure if it's been mentioned anywhere else in our forum, but LeVar Burton (of Reading Rainbow and Star Trek fame) has a podcast in which he reads a short story per episode. I haven't listened to it yet but have heard its wonderful.

I can vouch for "LeVar Burton Reads". He selects great stories.

The LeVar Burton podcast sounds wonderful--thanks for the link, Caroline (and for seconding the suggestion, Whitney)!

Looks like the Short Story Thursday project chose an interesting selection judging from the Facebook page (I wasn't familiar with all the stories, but a lot of the authors were familiar to me). Thanks for posting, carissa!

Thanks for starting this Marc but pray tell, where is it on the Discussions list? I had to search for "briefs" to find it!

I enjoyed the links to articles discussing short stories but doubt if I will be able to correctly classify the type of short story any story I read is! I do like short stories though and glad you started this!

LindaJ^,
I just moved the folder up in the line up of discussion folders so it should appear just under our current group reads. I'll also mention it when the announcement goes out for the winner of the next Wild Card group read.

No pressure to classify any types. Mainly started it because a lot of us enjoy short stories and more people can participate given greater access and less of a time commitment!

I'm a short story fan, so I'm looking forward to your selections! Will you send messages to let us know when there's a new one?

Glad to see so many fellow short story fans!

That's a great question PattyMacDotComma. We try to limit the number of member-wide messages to 1 or 2 per month, so there may be a little delay between when a story is introduced and when a story appears in an announcement, but we'll try to take that into account in terms of giving people time to read and participate. Also trying to leave it a little flexible because some stories may be extremely short (e.g., if we look at some flash fiction) and some may be rather long. How's that for a partial answer?

I can tell you the next one will be introduced the first week of October. Once we have more than one story, the top post in this overview thread will be edited to serve as a sort of index for the stories we've covered.

Marc wrote: "Glad to see so many fellow short story fans!

That's a great question PattyMacDotComma. We try to limit the number of member-wide messages to 1 or 2 per month, so there may be a little delay betwee..."

Groups have different techniques, but I reckon if you keep this thread alive, you can update it whenever you open a new story discussion and tell us where it is. Short story readers can easily follow these updates, and it won't annoy anyone else.

You could probably pin a post at the top and add the titles and links there as you choose them. It would make a great list of all the stories, too!

Also, are spoilers allowed, or are they to be hidden?

Spoilers allowed! Thanks for the great suggestions, PattyMacDotComma.

Marc wrote: "Spoilers allowed! Thanks for the great suggestions, PattyMacDotComma."

: )

Putting a pause on this short story discussion thread due to my own time constraints and limited group interest. May or may not be revived in the future.