A Small, Good Thing

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  A Career in Short Story Writing (with Elizabeth Baines) 24.09.2026 26Min.

  In this episode, I get to chat with Elizabeth Baines about her career as a writer, from the first short story she ever published to her upcoming projects, passing through the times when she worked as a writer of radio plays and the co-editor of the short story magazine Metropolitan. Works cited: Elizabeth Baines, Five Different Stories about One Thing (Confingo, 2026). Elizabeth Baines, The Mountain and Other Stories, a speculative novella and stories (GoldSF, Forthcoming).Lucy Caldwell, Intimacies (Faber and Faber, 2021).Podcast intro and outro credits: Shield, Leroy, Taylor Holmes, and Robert W Service. The shooting of Dan McGrew. 1923. Audio. Retrieved from the Library of Congress.
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  Writing Short Fiction in the Digital Age (with Vicky Grut) 03.09.2026 30Min.

  Vicky Grut is a short story writer and an essayist. In this episode, Vicky discusses what it means to be a short story writer in the heyday of the digital revolution, and at a time of hyper-connectivity. Listen as she reflects on how much of the contemporary world can be integrated into fiction without risking obsolescence in just a few years.  Works cited: Vicky Grut, 'My Own True Name', in Best British Short Stories 2026, ed. by Nicholas Royle (Salt, 2026). Vicky Grut, Live Show, Drink Included: Collected Stories (Holland Park Press, 2018). Vicky Grut, 'The Eid Dinner', Manchester Review, no. 29 (2026). Annie Ernaux, The Years (Fitzcarraldo Editions, 2022).Isle McElory, ‘Writing Social Media Into Fiction’. Catapult (26 April, 2022), https://magazine.catapult.co/dont-write-alone/stories/writing-social-media-into-fiction-craft-essay-isle-mcelroy  David Foster Wallace, ‘E Unibus Pluram: Television and U.S. Fiction’, in A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again (Little, Brown, 1997), pp. 21-82.  Liadan Ní Chuinn, Everyone Still Here (The Stinging Fly, 2025).  Organisations mentioned: European Network for Short Fiction Research (ENSFR), https://ensfr.univ-angers.fr/ CityLit, https://www.citylit.ac.uk/ Podcast intro and outro credits: Shield, Leroy, Taylor Holmes, and Robert W Service. The shooting of Dan McGrew. 1923. Audio. Retrieved from the Library of Congress.
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  The Importance of Voice in Short Fiction (with David Hartley) 13.08.2026 36Min.

  David Hartley is a short story writer, creative writing teacher, and the author of the collection of short stories Fauna (2021). In this episode we discuss the importance of voice in short story writing. What is voice? What does it mean for a writer to work on voice? How many voices can a short story writer have? How far can one trespass into alien territories when seeking for a character’s voice?  Works cited: David Hartley, Fauna (Fly On The Wall Press, 2021). David Hartley, ‘Voice of the Gods, Voice of the People: Authority and Authenticity in the Modern Short Story’, in The Subtle Art of Short Fiction, ed. by Isabelle Kenyon (Fly On The Wall Press, 2026), pp. 85-92. George Saunders, A Swim in a Pond in the Rain (Bloomsbury, 2021). Flannery O’Connor, ‘The Nature and Aim of Fiction’, in Mystery and Manners (Faber and Faber, 2014), pp. 63-86. Flannery O’Connor, ‘Writing Short Stories’, in Mystery and Manners (Faber and Faber, 2014), pp. 87-106. Sandra Cisneros, ‘Barbie-Q’, in Woman Hollering Creek and Other Stories (Random House, 1991), pp. 14-16. Kit de Waal, ‘The Art of Trespass’, keynote at the National Creative Writing Conference, 2016: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y_N10wSo4ZA Shirley Jackson, ‘The Summer People’, in Dark Tales (Penguin Classics, 2016).Podcast intro and outro credits: Shield, Leroy, Taylor Holmes, and Robert W Service. The shooting of Dan McGrew. 1923. Audio. Retrieved from the Library of Congress.
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  Lauren Groff's Florida (with Valentina Lopez Liendo) 23.07.2026 30Min.

  Lauren Groff’s second collection of short stories, Florida (2018), is a powerful reflection on nature and climate. In this episode, Valentina Lopez Liendo takes a closer look at Groff’s representation of the relationship between humans and the environment and how this relationship reflects the inequalities that plague contemporary society. Valentina Lopez Liendo is a postdoctoral researcher at the Heidelberg Center for American Studies. She is the author of the upcoming monograph Colson Whitehead Beyond the Novel (Routledge, 2026).  Works cited: Valentina Lopez Liendo, Colson Whitehead Beyond the Novel (Routledge, 2026). Lauren Groff, Florida (Penguin, 2018). Nicholas M. Kelly, Nicole White, and Loren Glass. 'Squatter Regionalism: Postwar Fiction, Geography, and the Program Era.' Journal of Cultural Analytics, vol. 6, no. 2, Apr. 2021. https://doi.org/10.22148/001c.22332.  Lucie Shelley, ‘My Own Boundaries Seem to Be Fading: An Interview with Lauren Groff’. Paris Review of Books, 5 June 2018. https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2018/06/05/my-own-boundaries-seem-to-be-fading-an-interview-with-lauren-groff/ Matthew Wynn Sivils. 'Introduction: The Proliferation of the Ecogothic.' Studies in American Fiction, vol. 50, nos. 1–2, Mar. 2023, pp. 1–9. https://doi.org/10.1353/saf.2023.a923091. Simon C. Estok, 'Theorizing in a Space of Ambivalent Openness: Ecocriticism and Ecophobia,'  ISLE: Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment 16, no. 2 (2009): 203–225. Val Plumwood, Feminism and the Mastery of Nature (Routledge, 2003). Val Plumwood, 'Gender, Eco-Feminism and the Environment.' Controversies in Environmental Sociology, ed. by Robert White (Cambridge University Press, 2004), pp. 43–60. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511804434.004. Jeffrey Andrew Weinstock. 'Introduction: The American Gothic.' The Cambridge Companion to American Gothic, ed. by Jeffrey Andrew Weinstock (Cambridge University Press, 2017), pp. 1–12.  https://doi.org/10.1017/9781316337998.001. Lauren Groff, ‘The Midnight Zone’, in Florida (Penguin, 2018), pp. 68-83. Lauren Groff, ‘Ghosts and Empties’, in Florida (Penguin, 2018), pp. 1-14. Teresa A. Goddu 'Homelessness in Lauren Groff’s Florida Fiction: Climate Change and Displacement.' Cli-Fi and Class: Socioeconomic Justice in Contemporary American Climate Fiction, by Lisa Ottum et al., ed. by Debra J. Rosenthal and Jason de Lara Molesky (University of Virginia Press, 2023) pp. 221–34. Lauren Groff, ‘Flower Hunters’, in Florida (Penguin, 2018), pp. 155-69. Lauren Groff, 'Eyewall', in Florida (Penguin, 2018), pp. 84-100. Lauren Groff. 'Under the Wave.' The New Yorker, 2 July 2018. https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/07/09/under-the-wave. W. E. B. Dubois, 'The Comet', in Darkwater: Voices from within the Veil (Harcourt, 1920), pp. 253-74. Podcast intro and outro credits: Shield, Leroy, Taylor Holmes, and Robert W Service. The shooting of Dan McGrew. 1923. Audio. Retrieved from the Library of Congress.
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  On winning a short story prize (with William Weightman) 02.07.2026 29Min.

  In this episode, I chat with William Weightman about his short story “Green Green Grass”, which won first place in this year’s Bristol Short Story Prize. Listen as William talks about how the story came about, what matters to him when writing short fiction, and how he balances his writing with a full-time job and life as a new dad.  Works cited: William Weightman, ‘Green Green Grass’, in Bristol Short Story Prize Anthology, vol. 18 (Tangent Books, 2026). William Gaddis, J R (Alfred A. Knopf, 1975). William Gaddis, The Letters of William Gaddis, ed. by Steven Moore (Dalkey Archive Press, 2013). Gerald Murnane, ‘In Praise of the Long Sentence’. Meanjin (Autumn 2016). [https://meanjin.com.au/essays/in-praise-of-the-long-sentence/]Donald Barthelme, ‘The School’. New Yorker, 10 June 1974 [https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1974/06/17/the-school]Donald Barthelme, Sixty Stories (Penguin Modern Classics, 2005). Donald Barthelme, Forty Stories (Penguin Modern Classics, 2005).Podcast intro and outro credits: Shield, Leroy, Taylor Holmes, and Robert W Service. The shooting of Dan McGrew. 1923. Audio. Retrieved from the Library of Congress.
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  The Short Story in Midcentury America (with Sam Reese) 11.06.2026 31Min.

  Around 1950, the short story genre in America was at the highest and at the same time most delicate moment of its history. While the number of magazines publishing short fiction and of short story collections reached its apex, political and ideological pressures sought to undermine the prestige of the short story in order to promote other literary forms. In this episode, Sam Reese tells the fascinating story of four writers who in those years used the short story as an outlet for countercultural expression. Sam Reese is Senior Lecturer at York St. John University, a short story writer and a jazz music critic.   Works cited: Sam Reese, The Short Story in Midcentury America: Countercultural Form in the Work of Bowles, McCarthy, Welty, and Williams (Louisiana State University Press, 2017). Sam Reese, ‘Only anecdotal: Diane Williams, loneliness and short story form.’ Short Fiction in Theory & Practice, 12.1 (2022), pp. 19-30. Sam Reese, ‘Eleven Kinds? Loneliness and Reading for Type with Richard Yates.’ American Literature, 94.2 (2022), pp. 357-380. Sam Reese, Blue Notes: Jazz, Literature, and Loneliness (LSU Press, 2019). Sam Reese (ed.), The Notebooks of Sonny Rollins (NYRB, 2024). Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man (Random House, 1952). William Burroughs, The Naked Lunch (Grove Press, 1959). Mary McCarthy, The Group (Harcourt, Brace, 1963). Mary McCarthy, The Company She Keeps (Simon & Schuster, 1942). Tennessee Williams, One Arm and Other Stories (New Directions Publishers, 1948). James Salter, Last Night: Stories (Vintage, 2006).Podcast intro and outro credits: Shield, Leroy, Taylor Holmes, and Robert W Service. The shooting of Dan McGrew. 1923. Audio. Retrieved from the Library of Congress.
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  David Foster Wallace's Short Fiction (with Marshall Boswell) 21.05.2026 34Min.

  2026 marks the 30th anniversary of the publication of Infinite Jest, arguably David Foster Wallace’s most famous and celebrated book. In this episode, Professor Marshall Boswell, one of the leading scholars in the field of David Foster Wallace’s studies, discusses Wallace’s three brilliant short story collections: Girl with Curious Hair (1989), Brief Interviews with Hideous Men (1999), and Oblivion (2004).  Works cited: Marshall Boswell, Understanding David Foster Wallace. Revised and Expanded Edition (University of South Carolina Press, 2020). Marshall Boswell and Stephen J. Burn (eds.), A Companion to David Foster Wallace’s Studies (Palgrave Macmillan, 2013). Marshall Boswell, David Foster Wallace and the Long Thing (Bloomsbury Academic, 2014). Marshall Boswell, The Wallace Effect: David Foster Wallace and the Contemporary Literary Imagination (Bloomsbury Academic, 2019). David Foster Wallace, Girl with Curious Hair (Norton, 1989). David Foster Wallace, Brief Interviews with Hideous Men (Little, Brown, 1999). David Foster Wallace, Oblivion: Stories (Little, Brown, 2004). David Foster Wallace, The Broom of the System (Viking, 1987). D. T. Max, Every Love Story is a Ghost Story: A Life of David Foster Wallace (Granta, 2013). David Foster Wallace, Infinite Jest (Little, Brown, 1996). David Foster Wallace, ‘E Unibus Pluram: Television and U.S. Fiction’, in A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again (Little, Brown, 1997), pp. 21-82. John Barth, Lost in the Funhouse (Doubleday, 1968). Harold Bloom, The Anxiety of Influence: A Theory of Poetry (Oxford University Press, 1973). Bret Easton Ellis, American Psycho (Vintage, 1991). David Foster Wallace, Consider the Lobster and Other Essays (Little, Brown, 2005). John Updike, Problems and Other Stories (Alfred A. Knopf, 1979). David Foster Wallace, The Pale King (Little, Brown, 2011). John Updike, Pigeon Feathers and Other Stories (Alfred A. Knopf, 1962). Lauren Groff, Florida (Penguin, 2018).Podcast intro and outro credits: Shield, Leroy, Taylor Holmes, and Robert W Service. The shooting of Dan McGrew. 1923. Audio. Retrieved from the Library of Congress.
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  The New Yorker Short Story (with Naomi Kanakia) 30.04.2026 29Min.

  In this episode, Naomi Kanakia (a.k.a Woman of Letters on Substack) tells the fascinating tale of the New Yorker Short Story. Since the times of Harold Ross and editor Katharine White, the New Yorker has been the most renowned literary magazine publishing short fiction in the US. Does a “New Yorker short story” really exists? And if it does, what does it look like?Naomi Kanakia is the author of a hugely popular blog on Substack (link below), has an upcoming non-fiction book with Princeton University Press (What’s so Great about the Great Books?) and is working on a collection of short stories to be released by Random House in 2028.  Works cited:Naomi Kanakia, What’s so Great about the Great Books? (Princeton University Press, 2026). John Cheever, The Stories of John Cheever (Random House, 1981). Amy Reading, The World She Edited: Katharine S. White at the New Yorker (Mariner Books, 2024). Sally Benson, ‘Lady with a Lamp’, New Yorker, January 18, 1947. The New Yorker, 55 Short Stories from the New Yorker (Simon & Schuster, 1949). Blake Bailey, Cheever: A Life (Alfred A. Knopf, 2009). John O’Hara, Appointment in Samarra (Harcourt Brace, 1934). Irwin Shaw, The Young Lions (Random House, 1948). Mavis Gallants, Collected Short Stories (Everyman’s Library, 2016).  Naomi’s Substack blog: https://www.woman-of-letters.com/ You can read Naomi’s Substack post about the New Yorker short story here: https://www.woman-of-letters.com/p/money-and-prestige.Podcast intro and outro credits: Shield, Leroy, Taylor Holmes, and Robert W Service. The shooting of Dan McGrew. 1923. Audio. Retrieved from the Library of Congress.
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  Richard Brautigan's Short Fiction (with Chris Gair) 09.04.2026 32Min.

  Richard Brautigan is most famous for his iconic novel Trout Fishing in America (1967), but he was also a prolific short story writer and poet. Whether you are a hardcore Brautigan fan, or you have never heard of him, this episode is for you! Chris Gair is the director of the Andrew Hook Centre for American Studies, Senior Lecturer in American Literature and Culture at the University of Glasgow, and one of the greatest Brautigan experts! He is the author of The American Counterculture (Edinburgh University Press), of The Beat Generation: a Beginner’s Guide (Oneworld), and of numerous articles on American literature. Works mentioned:Richard Brautigan, Trout Fishing in America (Four Seasons Foundation, 1967).Richard Brautigan, A Confederate General from Big Sur (Grove Press, 1965).Richard Brautigan, In Watermelon Sugar (Four Seasons Foundation, 1968).Richard Brautigan, Revenge of the Lawn (Simon & Schuster, 1971).Richard Brautigan, Tokyo-Montana Express (Delacorte Press, 1980).Richard Brautigan, ‘The Post Offices of Eastern Oregon’ in Revenge of the Lawn (Simon & Schuster, 1971), pp. 72-79.Richard Brautigan, ‘The Scarlatti Tilt’, in Revenge of the Lawn (Simon & Schuster, 1971), p. 37.Lionel Trilling, ‘Huckleberry Finn’, in The Liberal Imagination (Secker and Warburg, 1951), pp. 104-117 (p. 106).Ernest Hemingway, In Our Time (Boni & Liveright, 1925). Andrew Hook Centre for American Studies (University of Glasgow) https://surreylearn.surrey.ac.uk/d2l/le/lessons/283532/topics/3511681Podcast intro and outro credits: Shield, Leroy, Taylor Holmes, and Robert W Service. The shooting of Dan McGrew. 1923. Audio. Retrieved from the Library of Congress.
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  Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's Short Fiction (with Chigozirim Nwaosu) 19.03.2026 33Min.

  Chigozirim Nwaosu is a PhD candidate in English Literature in the School of Literature and Languages at the University of Surrey (UK). Her research focuses on the intersectionality between race, gender and sexuality and how it affects contemporary societies. In this episode, Chigozirim discusses the representation of gender and sexuality in Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s 2009 collection The Thing Around Your Neck. Listen to find out what role colonialism played in shaping the narrative surrounding Africa, African women and the African queer community.  Works mentioned:Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, The Thing Around Your Neck (4th Estate, 2009). Devon W. Carbado, ‘Privilege’ in Johnson, Patrick E., and Henderson, MAE G. (eds.) Black Queer Studies: A Critical Anthology (Duke University Press, 2005), pp. 190-212.Ifi Amadiume, Male Daughters, Female Husbands: Gender and Sex in an African Society (Zed, 1987).Sylvia Tamale, African Sexualities: A Reader (Pambazuka Press, 2011).Judith Butler, Who's Afraid of Gender? (Allen Lane, 2024).Franz Fanon, Black Skin, White Masks (Pluto Press, 1986).M. Epprecht ‘Africa and African Homosexualities: An Introduction’ in Murray, S. O. & Roscoe, W. (eds.) Boy-Wives and Female Husband: Studies in African Homosexualities (State University of New York Press, 1998), pp. 1-16.BBC Africa, Theresa May ‘deeply regrets’ UK’s colonial anti-gay laws (2018). Available at: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-43795440.Podcast intro and outro credits: Shield, Leroy, Taylor Holmes, and Robert W Service. The shooting of Dan McGrew. 1923. Audio. Retrieved from the Library of Congress.
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  Writing Through Writer's Block (With Aaron Colton) 26.02.2026 30Min.

  What can fictional representations of blocked short story writers teach us about writer’s block and what causes a writer to feel blocked? I discuss these questions with Aaron Colton, Associate Teaching Professor and Director of First-Year Writing in the Department of English at Emory University in Atlanta. Aaron is the author of the book Writing Through Writer’s Block: Lessons from Modern American Fiction, published by the University of Iowa Press in 2025. Works mentioned:  Aaron Colton, Writing Through Writer’s Block: Lessons from Modern American Fiction (University of Iowa Press, 2025).Steven Pressfield, The War of Art: Break Through the Blocks and Win Your Inner Creative Battles (Black Irish Entertainment LLC, 2002).Elizabeth Tallent, Scratched: A Memoir of Perfectionism (Harper, 2020).Mike Rose (ed.), When a Writer Can’t Write: Studies in Writer’s Block and Other Composing-Process Problems (Guilford Press, 1985).Mike Rose, ‘Rigid Rules, Inflexible Plans, and the Stifling of Language: A Cognitivist Approach to Writer’s Block.’ College Composition and Communication 31, no. 4 (1980), pp. 389–401.Tillie Olsen, Silences, 25th edition (Feminist Press at CUNY, 2003).John W. Aldridge, Talents and Technicians: Literary Chic and the New Assembly Line Fiction (Scribner’s, 1992).Mark McGurl, The Program Era: Postwar Fiction and the Rise of Creative Writing (Harvard University Press, 2009).Lucy Ives, Loudermilk: Or, The Real Poet; Or, The Origin of the World. A Novel. (Soft Skull Press, 2019).Nam Le, ‘Love and Honor and Pity and Pride and Compassion and Sacrifice,’ in The Boat (Vintage, 2009), pp. 3-28.Ian Afflerbach, ‘On the Literary History of Selling Out: Craft, Identity, and Commercial Recognition’, in PMLA 137, no. 2 (2022), pp. 238–54. Andrew Martin, Early Work: A Novel (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2018). Andrew Martin, ‘No Cops’, in Cool for America: Stories (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2020).Podcast intro and outro credits: Shield, Leroy, Taylor Holmes, and Robert W Service. The shooting of Dan McGrew. 1923. Audio. Retrieved from the Library of Congress.
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  Women of Wonder: Women Short Story Writers in Science Fiction (With Paul March-Russell) 05.02.2026 33Min.

  Paul March-Russell is the outgoing editor of Foundation: The International Review of Science Fiction, the co-founder of Gold SF, an intersectional feminist science fiction imprint of Goldsmiths Press, and the author of The Short Story: An Introduction for Edinburgh University Press. In this episode, Paul discusses the importance of women writers in science fiction and the legacy of the short story collection Women of Wonder (1974) edited by Pamela Sargent.  Works mentioned:Paul March-Russell, The Short Story: An Introduction (Edinburgh University Press, 2009). ‘Definitions of SF’, in The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction, ed. by John Clute and David Langford https://sf-encyclopedia.com/entry/definitions_of_sf.China Miéville, ‘Cognition as Ideology: A Dialectic of SF Theory’, in Red Planets: Marxism and Science Fiction, ed. by Mark Bould and China Miéville (Pluto Press, 2009), pp. 231-48.Pamela Sargent (ed.), Women of Wonder: Science Fiction Stories by Women about Women (Penguin, 1974).On Margaret Atwood’s ‘talking squid in outer space’, see David Barnett, ‘Science fiction: the genre that dare not speak its name’, The Guardian (28 Jan. 2009), https://www.theguardian.com/books/booksblog/2009/jan/28/science-fiction-genre Joanna Russ, ‘Nobody’s Home’, in Women of Wonder, ed. by Pamela Sargeant (Penguin, 1974), pp. 242-58. David Harvey, ‘Time–Space Compression and the Postmodern Condition’, in The Condition of Postmodernity (Blackwell, 1990), pp. 284-307. Tom Moylan, Demand the Impossible: Science Fiction and the Utopian Imagination (Peter Lang, 2014).Ursula K. Le Guin, ‘Vaster Than Empires and More Slow’, in Women of Wonder, ed. by Pamela Sargeant (Penguin, 1974), pp. 191-224.Robert Heinlein, ‘Waldo’, in Waldo & Magic, Inc (Macmillan, 1969). [See also Anne McCaffrey, ‘The Ship Who Sang’, in Women of Wonder, ed. by Pamela Sargent (Penguin, 1974), pp. 82-107.]‘Symposium: Women in Science Fiction’, Khatru 3/4 (1975), https://fanac.org/fanzines/Khatru/Khatru03.pdf.  Joanna Russ, ‘The Image of Women in Science Fiction’, in Images of Women in Fiction: Feminist Perspectives, ed. by Susan Koppelman Cornillon (Bowling Green University Popular Press, 1972), pp. 79-94.Joanna Russ, To Write Like a Woman: Essays in Feminism and Science Fiction, ed. by Sarah Lefanu (Indiana University Press, 1995).Lisa Yaszek, Galactic Suburbia: Recovering Women’s Science Fiction (Ohio University Press, 2008).Isaac Asimov, I, Robot (Harper Voyager, 2013).Kingsley Amis, New Maps of Hell: A Survey of Science Fiction (Arno Press, 1975).Martin Scofield, The Cambridge Introduction to the American Short Story (CUP, 2006).Edith Wharton, The Writing of Fiction (Touchstone, 1997).Pamela Zoline, ‘The Heat Death of the Universe’, in The Heat Death of the Universe and Other Stories (McPherson & Company, 1988), pp. 13-28. [Published in the UK as Busy about the Tree of Life (The Women’s Press, 1988).] E. J. Swift, When There Are Wolves Again (Quercus Publishing, 2025). Vonda L. McIntyre, Little Sisters and Other Stories (Gold SF, 2024).James Tiptree Jr., Warm Worlds and Otherwise (Penguin Classics Science Fiction, 2021).James Tiptree Jr. ‘The Women Men Don’t See’, in Warm Worlds and Otherwise (Penguin Classics Science Fiction), pp. 156-98.Ursula K. Le Guin, The Wind’s Twelve...
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  The Best of the Best: Literary Institutions and the American Short Story Canon (With Alexander Manshel) 15.01.2026 34Min.

  Alexander Manshel is Associate Professor of English at McGill University in Montreal (Canada). His research focuses on twentieth- and twenty-first-century American literature, multi-ethnic American fiction, and the cultural institutions that organize the contemporary literary field. How is contemporary short fiction in America influenced by the people and institutions that contribute to its production, circulation, and reception? Listen to find out!Works mentioned:  Alexander Manshel, ‘The Best of the Best: Anthologies, Prizes, and the Short Story Canon’, in The Cambridge Companion to the American Short Story, ed. by Michael Collins and Gavin Jones (Cambridge University Press, 2023), pp. 62-79.Charles E. May, ‘The American Short Story in the Twenty-First Century’ in Short Story Theories: A Twenty-First-Century Perspective, ed. by Viorica Patea (Rodopi, 2012), pp. 299-324. Perspective (Rodopi).Alexander Manshel, Writing Backwards: Historical Fiction and the Reshaping of the American Canon (Columbia University Press, 2023).Podcast intro and outro credits: Shield, Leroy, Taylor Holmes, and Robert W Service. The shooting of Dan McGrew. 1923. Audio. Retrieved from the Library of Congress.
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  Small, Good Things. A Special Episode 24.12.2025 54Min.

  (00:00:00) Intro (00:02:00) The Place to Find a Body (Ailsa Cox) (00:06:17) The Woman in the Tracksuit (Charlie Hill) (00:07:05) The Sunshine Skyway (Lauren C. Johnson) (00:13:53) New You (Shelley Roche-Jacques) (00:16:05) The Whites of Her Eyes (Molly Treweek) (00:21:58) Muguette (Elsa Court) (00:30:22) bill (Timothy Fox) (00:33:49) Spirits (Elizabeth Geoghegan) (00:37:01) Curtain Call (Niamh Swain) (00:43:24) A New Lease (Loghan Fellows) (00:45:29) Unbecoming (Sonya Moor) (00:50:09) She Will Sleep (Abi Millner) (00:53:05) The Man Who Walks Backwards (Charlie Hill) (00:54:12) Outro Ailsa Cox has published fiction in numerous magazines and anthologies, and twice been longlisted for the BBC National Short Story Award. You can read her latest story, “Poltergeist”, in The Manchester Review. Precipitation, a mini-collection in collaboration with the artist Patricia Farrell, is available from Confingo. Other books include Writing Short Stories (Routledge 3rd edition 2025) and, as co-author, Reading Alice Munro’s Breakthrough Books (EUP 2024).“The Place to Find a Body” was first published in Suzanne Bray and Gérald Préher (eds.), Tomorrow’s World/ Le Monde de demain, Biennale Ecoposs, FLSH, Lille, 2022.Elsa Court is a French-born writer and translator based in London. She holds a PhD in English Literature from UCL, and completed The Stinging Fly Advanced Fiction Workshop with Seán O'Reilly in 2019. Her stories and essays have appeared in Granta, American Short Fiction, The Los Angeles Review of Books, and The TLS, and she has translated essays and interviews for publications including the Financial Times and Another Gaze. She teaches Creative Writing at Birkbeck, University of London. “Muguette” originally appeared in Issue Four of Worms Magazine, a London-based publication championing new writing by women and nonbinary authors, in 2021.Loghan Fellows is a Sheffield-based writer and performer who enjoys writing short-form fiction and spouting long-form balderdash. He is currently in his final year of a Creative Writing undergraduate degree at Sheffield Hallam University. He can be found on Instagram under the dashingly original moniker of @loghanfellowswriter.Timothy Fox lives and writes in London. His chapbook every house needs a ghost was recently published by The Braag. It was a finalist for the Robert Phillips Poetry Chapbook Prize. His writing has appeared in, among others, The Molotov Cocktail, The Ghastling, Funicular Magazine and New Writing Scotland. In 2023, he was named a London Library Emerging Writer.Elizabeth Geoghegan was born in New York, grew up in the Midwest, and lives in Rome. She is the author of two short story collections eightball and Natural Disasters, and the bestselling memoir The Marco Chronicles. Her work has appeared in The Paris Review, The Best Travel Writing, TIME, El Pais, Words Without Borders, BOMB, and elsewhere. “Spirits” is forthcoming in an anthology of writing about Naples in conjunction with the Giancarlo DiTrapano foundation.Charlie Hill is a writer from Birmingham. His work has appeared in publications such as Ambit, Stand, The Lonely Crowd, Confingo, Riptide and the Manchester Review, 
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  Flash Fiction and Three-Dimensional Story Worlds (with Shelley Roche-Jacques) 04.12.2025 31Min.

  Shelley Roche-Jacques is a poet, flash fiction writer and Senior Lecturer of Creative Writing at Sheffield Hallam University (UK). In this episode, Shelley will be our guide into the world of Flash Fiction. How can a writer mobilise the story world and create three-dimensional stories when all they have at their disposal is a few hundred words? Listen and find out!Works cited:Shelley Roche-Jacques, ‘Flash fiction as a distinct literary form: some thoughts on time, space, and context’, in New Writing 21:2 (2024), pp. 171-89.Kim Chinquee, 'Flash fiction, prose poetry and men jumping out of windows: searching for plot and finding definitions', in The Rose Metal Press Field Guide to Writing Flash Fiction, ed. by Tara L. Masih (Rose Metal Press, 2009), pp. 111-12.Tania Hersham, ‘Flash Fiction 2014 Judge’s Report’. The Birdport Prize, https://bridportprize.org.uk/.Ron Wallace, ‘Ron Wallace – Writers Try Short-Shorts', University of Wisconsin – English Department. https://dept.english.wisc.edu/wallace/?page_id=63. Accessed 26/10/2025. Frank O’Connor, The Lonely Voice: A Study of the Short Story (Melville House, 2011).Tony Williams, ‘Flash Fiction’, in The Handbook of Creative Writing, ed. by Steven Earnshaw (Edinburgh University Press, 2014), pp. 315-23. Amelia Gray, The Swan as Metaphor for Love, in Joyland (December 2012), https://joylandpublishing.com/uncategorized/swan-metaphor-love/. Accessed 26/10/2025. Tony Williams, ‘Gareth’, in All the Banans I’ve Never Eaten (Salt, 2012).Tania Hersham (editor), Fuel: An Anthology of Prize-Winning Flash Fictions Raising Funds to Fight Fuel Poverty (Tania Hersham Books, 2025). Robert Shapard and James Thomas (editors), Sudden Fiction (Gibbs M. Smith, 1986). James Thomas and Robert Scotellaro (editors), New Micro: Exceptionally Short Fiction (Norton, 2018). Websites:SmokeLong Quarterly: https://www.smokelong.com. Wigleaf: https://wigleaf.com. Bath Flash Fiction Award Archive, https://www.bathflashfictionaward.com/tag/flash-fiction/. Bath Flash Fiction Award Anthologies, https://www.bathflashfictionaward.com/tag/flash-fiction-anthologies/.Podcast intro and outro credits: Shield, Leroy, Taylor Holmes, and Robert W Service. The shooting of Dan McGrew. 1923. Audio. Retrieved from the Library of Congress.
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  Like Old Photographs in Second-hand Books (With Nicholas Royle) 13.11.2025 31Min.

  Nicholas Royle is a short story writer, a novel writer, the editor of the Best British Short Stories series. In this episode, I get to chat with him about his latest collection of short stories, Paris Fantastique (Confingo), and about his passion for second-hand books. Nicholas is also the founder of Nighjar Press, which publishes individual short stories as limited-edition chapbooks. Listen to find out more!Works mentioned:Nicholas Royle, Paris Fantastique (Confingo Publishing, 2025). Nicholas Royle, Manchester Uncanny (Confingo Publishing, 2022). Nicholas Royle, London Gothic (Confingo Publishing, 2020). Nicholas Royle, Antwerp (Serpent’s Tail, 2005).Nicholas Royle (editor), The Best British Short Stories 2025 (Salt, 2025).Nicholas Royle, White Spines: Confessions of a Book Collector (Salt, 2021).Nicholas Royle, Shadow Lines: Searching for the Book beyond the Shelf (Salt, 2024).C. D. Rose, ‘I’m in Love with a German Film Star’, in Walter Benjamin Stares at the Sea, (Melville House, 2024). Joel Lane, The Foggy, Foggy Dew (1986). Alberto Manguel (editor), Black Water: An Anthology of Fantastic Literature (Picador, 1983). Shelley Jackson, The Melancholy of Anatomy (Anchor Books, 2002). Jamaica Kincaid, ‘Blackness’, in At the Bottom of the River (Picador, 1984).Confingo publishing: PARIS FANTASTIQUE by Nicholas Royle | confingoPodcast intro and outro credits: Shield, Leroy, Taylor Holmes, and Robert W Service. The shooting of Dan McGrew. 1923. Audio. Retrieved from the Library of Congress.
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  William Saroyan: Life at Full Volume (with Scott Setrakian) 23.10.2025 30Min.

  Scott Setrakian is the president of the William Saroyan Foundation. At the time we recorded this interview, he had just come back from Armenia, where he had taken part in a seven-day event called Saroyan Days. In this episode, he tells me about the life and works of Armenian American short story writer William Saroyan. Saroyan’s is a story of determination, perseverance, Pulitzer Prices, Academy Awards, and (above all) of superb writing!  Work mentioned:  William Saroyan, The Daring Young Man on the Flying Trapeze (Faber and Faber, 2024). William Saroyan, ‘The Pomegranate Trees’, in The Atlantic (February 1938). William Saroyan, Letters from 74 rue Taitbout (World Publishing Company, 1969). William Saroyan, The Human Comedy (Harcourt, Brace, 1943) William Saroyan, The Bicycle Rider in Beverly Hills (Scribner, 1952) William Saroyan, Places Where I’ve Done Time (Davis-Poynter, 1973) William Saroyan, Where the Bones Go (Pr at California st, 2002)  William Saroyan Foundation website: William Saroyan FoundationPodcast intro and outro credits: Shield, Leroy, Taylor Holmes, and Robert W Service. The shooting of Dan McGrew. 1923. Audio. Retrieved from the Library of Congress.
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  More Facts and Fiction of Short Story Writing (with Ailsa Cox) [Part Two] 02.10.2025 30Min.

  Ailsa Cox is a professor Emerita at Edge Hill University (UK) and a short story writer. In this second part of the interview we discuss famous pieces of short story writing advice like “show don’t tell”, the Freitag pyramid, ending with a moment of insight and much more! Listen to find out what is a fact and what is fiction!  Works mentioned:  Sarah Hall, ‘Sarah Hall on why we should have a short story laureate’, Guardian, Oct. 11 2013, https://www.theguardian.com/books/2013/oct/11/sarah-hall-short-story-laureate. George Saunders, A Swim in a Pond in the Rain (Bloomsbury, 2021). Katherine Mansfield, ‘At the Bay’, in Selected Stories (Oxford University Press, 2002). Ailsa Cox, ‘How Loud the Birds’, in Katherine Mansfield and The Garden Party and Other Stories, ed. by Gerri Kimber and Todd Martin (Edinburgh University Press, 2022), pp. 143-52. Susan Lohafer, Reading for Storyness: Preclosure Theory, Empirical Poetics, & Culture in the Short Story (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003). C.D. Rose, Walter Benjamin Stares at the Sea (Melville House, 2024). Sarah Schofield, ‘Safely Gathered In’, in Safely Gathered In (Comma Press, 2021). Charles Baxter, ‘Against Epiphanies’, in Burning Down the House. Essays on Fiction (Graywolf Press, 1997), pp. 51-78. Chris Power, Survival of the smallest: the contested history of the English short story, New Statesman, 27 June 2017. Malachi McIntosh, Parables, Fables, Nightmares (Emma Press, 2023). Daisy Johnson, The Hotel (Penguin, 2024). Elizabeth Strout, Anything is Possible (Viking, 2017). Grace Paley, ‘A Conversation with My Father’,  The Collected Stories of Grace Paley (Farrar, Strauss & Giroux, 1994), pp.232-237 (minute 28-29) Paul March-Russell, The Short Story: An Introduction (Edinburgh University Press, 2009).  Writing on the Wall, https://writingonthewall.org.uk/.Podcast intro and outro credits: Shield, Leroy, Taylor Holmes, and Robert W Service. The shooting of Dan McGrew. 1923. Audio. Retrieved from the Library of Congress.
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  The Facts and Fiction of Short Story Writing (with Ailsa Cox) [Part one] 11.09.2025 30Min.

  Ailsa Cox is a Professor Emerita at Edge Hill University (UK) and a short story writer. In this first part of the interview, we discuss famous claims about short stories and short story writing, like reading short stories in one sitting, the connection between short stories and poetic language, and much more. Listen to find out if they are facts or fiction!  Works cited: Ailsa Cox, Writing Short Stories. Third Edition (Routledge, 2025). Edgar Allan Poe, ‘The Philosophy of Composition’, in Essays and Reviews (Library of America, 1984) Leila Martin, Kodavision (Nightjar Press, 2025) Colm Tóibín, Mothers and Sons (Picador, 2006). Helen Simpson, Constitutional (Vintage, 2006). Allan Weiss, The Mini-Cycle (Routledge, 2021). Zoe Gilbert, Folk (Bloomsbury, 2018) Paul March-Russell, ‘Anthropocene feminism and the Weird temporalities of landscape’, Short Fiction in Theory and Practice, 15:1-2 (2025), pp. 81-95. Katherine Mansfield, ‘Bliss’, in Selected Stories (Oxford University Press, 2002). Janice Galloway, Blood (Vintage, 1991). Raymond Carver, ‘Fires’, in Call If You Need Me (The Harvill Press, 2000), pp.  93-106. Alice Munro, Runaway (Chatto & Windus, 2005).Nightjar Press, https://nightjarpress.weebly.com/Podcast intro and outro credits: Shield, Leroy, Taylor Holmes, and Robert W Service. The shooting of Dan McGrew. 1923. Audio. Retrieved from the Library of Congress.
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  The Culture and Commerce of the American Short Story (with Andrew Levy) 21.08.2025 32Min.

  Andrew Levy is professor of English and Creative Writing and the Edna Cooper Chair of English at Butler University in Indiana (USA). In this episode, I get to ask him a few questions about his book The Culture and Commerce of the American Short Story (Cambridge UP, 1992), a real watershed in short story criticism.Works referenced (in order of appearance)  Andrew Levy, The Culture and Commerce of the American Short Story (Cambridge University Press, 1992). Edgar Allan Poe, ‘Nathaniel Hawthorne’, in Essays and Reviews, ed. by G. R. Thompson (The Library of America, 1984), pp. 568-88. Edgar Allan Poe, ‘The Tell-Tale Heart’, in The Penguin Complete Tales and Poems of Edgar Allan Poe (Viking, 2011), pp. 216-20. Edgar Allan Poe, ‘The Philosophy of Composition,’ in Essays and Reviews, ed. by G. R. Thompson (The Library of America, 1984), pp. 13-25. John Cheever, ‘The Swimmer,’ in A Vision of the World: Selected Stories, ed. by Julian Barnes (Vintage, 2021), pp. 241-56. Ruth Suckow, ‘The Short Story’, Saturday Review of Literature 4.17 (1927), pp. 317-18. Percival Everett, James (Doubleday, 2024).Andrew Levy, Huck Finn's America: Mark Twain and the Era That Shaped His Masterpiece (Simon and Schuster, 2015).Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (Penguin Classics, 2006). Jocelyn A. Chadwick, The Jim Dilemma: Reading Race in Huckleberry Finn (University Press of Mississippi, 1998). Ralph Wiley, Spike Lee’s Huckleberry Finn, (unpublished screenplay) © copyright Ralph Wiley, 1997. Kelly Link, ‘Skindler’s Veil’, in When Things Get Dark: Stories Inspired by Shirley Jackson, ed. by Ellen Datlow (Titan Books, 2021).Podcast intro and outro credits: Shield, Leroy, Taylor Holmes, and Robert W Service. The shooting of Dan McGrew. 1923. Audio. Retrieved from the Library of Congress.