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. When I was in graduate school, working on the stories that would become my first book, Short People, one of my professors pulled me aside for a private meeting in ... [READ MORE]
NOTEBOOK
Online Fiction Interview: Helen Hooper
Few things are more disappointing than a predictable work of fiction, but one worse thing is the work of fiction that aims to surprise but falls flat. There's a big, fat, twist in November's online exclusive work of fiction, "Edge Habitat," by Helen Hooper. It's a particularly welcome twist because, well, it blindsided us. We recently emailed Hooper and asked her to tell us a bit about that twist, her other work, and about her previous life as a DC-based policy analyst with The Nature ... [READ MORE]
Jaimy Gordon Interviews Matthew Neill Null
"The Slow Lean of Time," Matthew Neill Null's sweeping account of the hazardous lives of 19th Century drovers who steered giant logs down West Virginia's rivers, contains what might be the most genuinely shocking moment of any short story I've read this year. This despite the fact that Null, whose story we were pleased to publish in Issue 57 of American Short Fiction, describes the world his characters inhabit from such a high vantage point that we see them as smallish players moving across an ... [READ MORE]
Online Fiction Interview: C.M. Barnes
This month, I want to preface our online exclusive interview with an anecdote. In my first semester of graduate school, I taught an introductory creative writing class in which I received four—four!—stories that were about a dying or recently deceased grandmother. My first thought: why no dead grandfathers? My second thought: along with stories about car crashes and college keg parties, I must ban stories about dead or dying grandmothers in future classes, and that's just what I ... [READ MORE]
An Interview with Bret Anthony Johnston
Bret Anthony Johnston has the distinction of being among the few writers occupying that slim but coveted slice of the Venn diagram: creative writing directors (Johnston is at the helm at Harvard) who have toured the country on a professional skateboarding team. Find a great discussion on this over at McSweeney’s. His latest work, Remember Me Like This, is a quiet and rich novel centered around a teenage boy named Justin who is returned to his family four years after his kidnapping. The story ... [READ MORE]
Online Fiction Interview: Erica Plouffe Lazure
Catherine, the devoted band mother in Erica Plouffe Lazure's "Marchers," is a wonderful example of just how affecting strong, straightforward, reliable narration can be. With an admitted pride in her son's accomplishments and an implied annoyance at the petty goings-on of her small-town life in rural North Carolina, Catherine's direct and clear narration makes the stranger elements of the story—Shriners in fezzes and miniature cars, young women bearing the agriculturally themed, honorific ... [READ MORE]