While the current crisis in Egypt makes the front pages of our papers on an almost-daily basis, the country’s complex, hopeful, and conflicted revolutionary history has also been written in its fiction. This week at ASF, we’re featuring two essays that explore the political climate and events that shaped region – through the filter of literature. The Egyptian writer Sonallah Ibrahim has been getting much attention in the U.S. these days. In March, his 1966 novel, That Smell, was published in … [Read more...] about Things American: Sonallah Ibrahim’s Fiction of Politics and Emptiness
NOTEBOOK FEATURE
Bourbon and Milk: Profitable Forgetting
Bourbon and Milk features lessons, observations, and conversations by and with writers living out there in one of the most perplexing outposts of the human condition – parenthood. In this monthly series, Contributing Editor Giuseppe Taurino will dive into the dark spaces where parenting sometimes pushes us, and explore the unexpected ways writers may grow in them. If you’re interested in joining the conversation or contributing a Bourbon and Milk post, query Giuseppe Taurino at … [Read more...] about Bourbon and Milk: Profitable Forgetting
Things American: NFL Preview
Welcome to American Short Fiction's NFL Preview. To mark the beginning of the 16-week season, we've asked writers and editors from around the country to comment on the their teams, through the filter of fiction. Follow the links to see who gets the Barry Hannah treatment and which team is more like Joan Didion's later works than her earliest. As you peruse, you'll see we have multiple approaches to the same teams, with a few surprises in store—if you happen to stumble upon Oakland Raiders … [Read more...] about Things American: NFL Preview
If You Lived Here: An Interview with Danielle Evans
I’m always thinking about place in fiction. I happen to write about a particular place, an Alaska laden with myth and personal and familial history. And I want to know, while reading, how other authors capture the nuances, the sounds, the smells, the senses of a place. What types of spaces do characters occupy, what spaces exist between characters, even spaces between the words on a page? At what moments does an outer landscape become an internal and psychological landscape? There have been … [Read more...] about If You Lived Here: An Interview with Danielle Evans
Online Fiction: Interview with Anthony Abboreno
We're excited to publish Anthony Abboreno's story, "Filler," the first fiction post on our website in over a year. Abboreno's story is about the complicated relationship between children and their parents' expectations. There are lobsters with personalities, an ex-wife who loves New Year's Eve, and a man who tries to do his best, but falls short. "Filler" covers a lot of territory in few words. We hope you like it as much as we do. MM: I love how the daughter’s taste in food becomes something … [Read more...] about Online Fiction: Interview with Anthony Abboreno
ASF Alumni: An Interview with Matt Bell
With two chapbooks, a short story collection and a novella in flash under his belt, Matt Bell has been quietly turning heads for years, accumulating acolytes and critical acclaim with his heady brand of visionary lyrical surrealism. Bell, along with the celebrated likes of Karen Russell, Aimee Bender, and Téa Obreht, is among a generation of young writers working far outside the bounds of mimesis to create a new kind of mythology more fully equipped to describe an increasingly absurd and … [Read more...] about ASF Alumni: An Interview with Matt Bell