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The Short Review shines the spotlight on short story collections, new and older, across all genres, styles, publishers and countries. Each month we review 10 books and interview as many of their authors as possible.... Read more>>

Author Interviews

" I used Sundress as the fulcrum in the middle of the book to begin the section with the stories. Its characters resemble those Terese Svoboda Author of Trailer Girl  in the novella yet propel the narrative in an entirely new direction. I ended with White because it refers to family as pieces of chicken shaken up inside a bag of flour and seasonings, a metaphor that I thought encompassed the wild familial theme of the whole book." Read the rest of the interview >>

"I envision a train that picks the character up at one station and drops him off at another, changed, or on the verge of change.He might not know it. Dylan Landis Author of Normal People Don't Live Like This  But you do. And somewhere on the train tracks (sorry; I think in pictures) there's a weed growing that sends down one of those long skinny roots you can't dig up with a trowel—a taproot. A story has to snake a taproot down into something murky and subconscious. It can't just travel along on the surface. " Read the rest of the interview >>

"I wrote a lot of stories that I’d intended to be part of the collection, but had to scrap them because they weren’t good enough. And there were a couple I Suzanne Rivecca Author of Death is Not An Option adamantly didn’t plan to include in the collection, but ended up including them anyway because I realized how they played off the others. In terms of the order, I aimed an emotional trajectory, a kind of arc, in which each successive protagonist has ascended a little higher in the reluctant journey to self-confrontation. " Read the rest of the interview >>

"It’s weird. When you are publishing work in journals and magazines, people can just page past your story without too much animus. If they buy your book, John Jodzio Author of If You Lived Here You'd Already Be Home   the pressure’s on for you to make every sentence memorable. That’s a lot of pressure and it’s why I lose sleep at night... " Read the rest of the interview >>

"I was experimenting with fabulist fiction and magic realism and flash fiction. I grew up reading the Brontes, Jane Austen, Twain, Hawthorne, Ramola D Author of Temporary Lives Dickens, the English and American classics - after my MFA I was reading Gabriel Garcia Marquez and Italo Calvino and Milan Kundera, also Janet Frame, whom I’ve long loved, and really experimenting with form. I was also exploring the surreal and language poets and writing poetry.. " Read the rest of the interview >>

"I never have a sense of a "future" on any of the work I do, be it stories, poems or novels. I just sit down at my computer and work Susan Tepper Author of Deer and Other Stories cold. No preconceived idea of whether it will be fiction or poetry that will come out during a particular writing time. What started as a story grew into a novel in two instances, simply because I fell so in love with the characters and plot that I couldn't bear it to end. I find all my longer works (4 novels) have been written in winter when I'm less distracted by the beauty of the warmer months... " Read the rest of the interview >>

"The story, like a poem, is a self-contained unit, complete with its volta, or that turning point at which the reader’s thinking about the events and the characters Lorraine M. Lopez Author of Homicide Survivors' Picnic becomes charged with new awareness or recognition, and I’m not talking about an epiphanic moment necessarily, but I am referring to that scalp-tightening moment, that frisson that occurs when one is moved powerfully and emotionally by a work of visual art or music. Great short stories can do this. A friend of mine who is a librarian has a simpler and handier definition. She says a short story consists of interesting people doing things, and for me, that works, too.... " Read the rest of the interview >>