Short stories: Fall 2020
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Eight Bites by Carmen Maria Machado (2017)
In "Eight Bites," Carmen Maria Machado goes inside the mind of a woman who undergoes bariatric weight loss surgery. It's often said that food is family, and the relationship of Machado's narrator to food and her own body is refracted through her relationships with the women of her family: an iron-willed mother, gossipy sisters, and a concerned daughter.
Weaving realistic storytelling with a surrealist twist, Machado explores the complicated feelings around a simple clinical procedure: desire, shame, love, envy, and a sense of having "lost" something more than merely weight.
The Man Who Forgot Ray Bradbury by Neil Gaiman (2012)
Neil Gaiman is one of the most prolific authors of fantasy and young adult fiction today and has published across a wide range of genres.
Neil Gaiman wrote “The Man Who Forgot Ray Bradbury” as a tribute to Ray Bradbury on his 91st birthday. It interweaves references to Bradbury’s work with a unique and tragic story.
Gaiman often delivers the story as a monologue in live events.
Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes (1959)
Published in 1959, the short story preceded the famous novel Flowers for Algernon and movie Charly about Algernon, a laboratory mouse in an experiment to increase his intelligence, followed by Charlie Gordon as the first human subject for the same surgery.
Narrated by the special needs adult, the journal entries document his mental-emotional growth and decline illustrated by language, style, and grammar. The story touches on perennial scientific topics such as human subject research, animal research, science ethics, and the treatment of the mentally disabled.
Hurricane Season by David Sedaris (2019)
After David and Hugh’s North Carolina beach house, the Sea Section, is destroyed by Hurricane Florence, David reflects on old-fashioned names, disturbed renters, his aging sisters, and Hugh’s stormy temperament. Through David Sedaris’ typical self-deprecating humor and wit, he reveals a story about relationships and resilience.
The City Born Great by N. K. Jemisin (2016)
From triple Hugo award winning author NK Jemison comes the story of a man living in New York City, a living, breathing, and growing city, an organism-like city, that must be born to continue growing. This man, an unwitting protector, must help the city be born before powerful forces succeed in destroying it. With ingenuity and speculative flair Jemison crafts a story about life, belonging, community, identity, oppression, and violence.
Where is Here? by Joyce Carol Oates (1990)
A couple opens their home to a stranger who says he lived there as a child. Joyce Carol Oates narrates the couple’s growing unease with the stranger’s visit in a restrained, matter-of-fact style, capturing the anger and dread lying just behind the appearance of middle-class respectability. Part comedy of manners, part bourgeois tragedy, “Where Is Here?” poses the question of what makes a house into a home in ways that no greeting card or throw pillow would dare!