Books

A Conversation With Best Debut Short Stories 2020 Author Shannon Sanders

“Every interaction between adult siblings presents a chance to get more clarity about the past. Hopefully, we’re able to seize at least some of these chances.”

Oct 09, 2020
A Conversation With Best Debut Short Stories 2020 Author Matthew Jeffrey Vegari

“I wrote much of the story listening to jazz, including the title song, for inspiration on how to shift without imposing too much of a structure.”

Oct 06, 2020
A Conversation With Best Debut Short Stories 2020 Author Willa C. Richards

“I wanted to portray the pain of trying to reach someone who is inside their own, unreachable pain, and how this often puts untenable pressure on relationships.”

Sep 24, 2020
A Conversation With Best Debut Short Stories 2020 Author Kristen Sahaana Surya

“I think so much art—especially cinema—acts as an instruction manual for women.”

Sep 21, 2020
A Conversation With Best Debut Short Stories 2020 Author Sena Moon

“It’s hard to keep the imposter syndrome at bay.”

Sep 18, 2020
A Conversation With Best Debut Short Stories 2020 Author Valerie Hegarty

“Some studies have actually found that a cat's purring can help mend broken bones.”

Sep 14, 2020
A Conversation With Best Debut Short Stories 2020 Author Ani Cooney

“Since March, how many have had to grow up fast and be valorous because of amoral, wicked, and cowardly leadership?”

Sep 11, 2020
A Conversation With Best Debut Short Stories 2020 Author Damitri Martinez

“I cling to art, sometimes as my only saving grace.”

Sep 08, 2020
A Conversation With Best Debut Short Stories 2020 Author Mohit Manohar

“Interracial love has been codified and digitized, and we’ve found that it sells less ads, is less addictive, than its alternative.”

Sep 04, 2020
A Conversation With Best Debut Short Stories 2020 Author Mbozi Haimbe

“I decided to subvert readers’ expectations in terms of the narrative of a diaspora visiting their homeland in order to challenge the myth that all those arriving home from the west are endowed with bags of cash.”

Sep 02, 2020
A Roundtable With the PEN America Best Debut Short Stories Judges: Tracy O’Neill, Nafissa Thompson-Spires, and Deb Olin Unferth

So many of the stories I liked best played with understatement and a sort of quiet, confident pacing.

Aug 25, 2020
A Conversation with Jessica J. Lee, Author of ‘Two Trees Make a Forest’

I just can’t stop coming back to this idea of human migrations, family migrations, and plant migrations.

A Conversation With PEN America Best Debut Short Stories 2019 Author JP Infante

“When you’re a kid you’re not sure if you don’t know something because you haven’t been taught it or because you’re not supposed to know.”

Oct 07, 2019
A Conversation With PEN America Best Debut Short Stories 2019 Author Kelsey Peterson

“I think, in pursuit of truth, science and religion still have to wrestle with the strictures of human knowledge, error, pride.”

Oct 02, 2019
A Conversation With PEN America Best Debut Short Stories 2019 Author Jade Jones

“The narration style feels very conversational to me. I liked how second-person really tries to make the reader part of the story as well.”

Sep 30, 2019
A Conversation With PEN America Best Debut Short Stories 2019 Author Sarah Curry

“I slowly connected the dots that nearly all my friends—no matter what continent we had been on—had experienced some level of sexual violence.”

Sep 27, 2019
A Conversation With PEN America Best Debut Short Stories 2019 Author Tamiko Beyer

“The themes of social justice, the magic of water, and the power of queer love to create a different world—these are themes that I return to again and again in my writing and my life.”

Sep 25, 2019
A Conversation With PEN America Best Debut Short Stories 2019 Author Doug Henderson

“Some stories just flow out of you and you try to keep up as you write them. This story was not like that.”

Aug 28, 2019
A Conversation With PEN America Best Debut Short Stories 2019 Author Laura Freudig

“When you feel like you have no power in a relationship, withholding becomes one of the only ways you can maintain the illusion of agency.”

Aug 26, 2019
A Conversation With PEN America Best Debut Short Stories 2019 Author Erin Singer

“Inspiration came from the stupid pencil jar our family had when I was growing up.”

Aug 22, 2019