story collections Archives -

Our 2018 Favorite Reads

From my reading of the past year, some favorites—here a memoir-in-essays and three story collections. How to Write an Autobiographical Novel: Essays by Alexander Chee “Writing is a way of going to the depth of Being,” wrote Marguerite Yourcenar, and in the sixteen essays that make up Alexander Chee’s 2018 memoir, the author dives deep, [….]

Litstack Rec: Thunderstruck & Other Stories & Kitchens of the Great Midwest

Thunderstruck & Other Stories, by Elizabeth McCracken Early on in Elizabeth McCracken’s extraordinary story collection, Thunderstruck, a grieving mother instructs her seventeen year-old son to seal up the room of his dead sister. This, she imagines will somehow purge the house of the evil that caused her daughter’s lymphoma. “Don’t touch a thing. Just seal [….]

Birthdays

On this day, February 15, in 1928, Norman Bridwell, the man who wrote and illustrated the delightful series of children’s books about Clifford, the Big Red Dog was born in Kokomo, Indiana. He was looking for work illustrating children’s picture books when an editor suggested that he turn a sketch of a young girl and her horse-sized dog into a story. That simple sketch eventually spawned over 40 Clifford books, two television series, and a live musical. (They also helped to catapult Scholastic into a children’s literature publishing powerhouse.) A generous man who lived a simple life in Martha’s Vineyard, Mr. Bridwell died in 2014 of heart failure; he was 86.

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