Bourbon and Milk is an ongoing series that dives into the perplexing spaces parenting sometimes pushes us and explores 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 giuseppe@americanshortfiction.org. “Where do you get so much energy?” I asked my daughter recently, the age-old parenting question. She was running around like on any other day while I sprawled supine on the ... [READ MORE]
NOTEBOOK
Things American: Ken Kesey, Hunter S. Thompson and the Hell’s Angels at La Honda: August 7th, 1965
Fifty years ago today, Ken Kesey, not yet thirty and already the author of two acclaimed novels, invited the members of the Hell’s Angels motorcycle gang to a party at his home in the coastal mountains south of San Francisco. When the Angels arrived it was just past 3 p.m. A blue summer afternoon: Kesey and his Merry Pranksters—the friends who’d accompanied him, the year before, on the cross-country bus trip that would later become the subject Tom Wolfe’s Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test—watched ... [READ MORE]
Things American: Writers Remember James Salter
American novelist, story writer, and screenwriter James Salter died on June 19th, leaving behind a body of work that presents a vision of a century in dramatic motion. He was a writer of the quotidian and a craftsman of the first water whose interest in sensory experiences is most evident in his arresting narrative passages. Food, drink, sex, the seemingly impossible beauty of things touched, witnessed, and heard—these are rendered in precise and yet often surprising terms in Salter's work. In ... [READ MORE]
Online Fiction Interview: Hilary Leichter
Hilary Leichter's "The Statue of Limitations" plays by its own delightful set of rules. It's at once the story of a couple imprisoned in their own home (a statue marking the furthest that they can roam into their yard without the "risk of pursuit") and a parable for how intimacy ebbs and flows in a relationship. We recently emailed Leichter to ask how the story came about and to pick her brain about the odd eggcorn that inspired its creation. Nate Brown: This story does something ... [READ MORE]
Listen to our Web Exclusive Stories Read by the Authors
Big news, friends. Since January, we've been working on a little project that we hope expands the reach of our web exclusive stories and that gives you, our readers, website visitors, subscribers, supporters, and pals, a new way to engage with the fiction we publish. ASF's Digital Editor Andrew Bales has been working with our web exclusive authors to record them reading their work so that we can pair the audio with the version of the story that we publish online. From here on out, you'll be ... [READ MORE]
Online Fiction Interview: Anna Noyes
June's online exclusive, "The Tobacconist" by Anna Noyes depicts longing so convincingly that it's difficult to pass judgment on the story's conflicted, suffering protagonist, George. It seemed to us that the magic of the story was that it depicted complication and ambivalence so tenderly. We emailed Noyes to ask about writing conflicted characters, about her taste in short-short fiction, and about her debut collection of stories, which is due out next year. Nate Brown: There’s so ... [READ MORE]