A Small, Good Thing

In this episode, poet Melanie Han explores the liminal space that exists between the short story and the poem, as well as the challenges in writing across languages and cultures. Is there a line of separation between short fiction and poems that tell a story? Is it always possible (or necessary) to distinguish between prose poetry and flash fiction? And what does it feel like to write about yourself when your own identity spans across several languages and cultures?  Works cited: Melanie Han, ‘Stacked Memories’, in My Dear Yeast (Milk and Cake Press, 2023), p. 27 Melanie Han, ‘Grandpa’s Evacuation’, in No Way of Returning Home (The Poetry Lighthouse, 2026), pp. 29-38Melanie Han, ‘The Uber Driver and Me’, in Among Worlds Magazine <https://amongworlds.interactionintl.org/the-uber-driver-and-me/>Ross Gay, The Book of Delights: Essays (Algonquin, 2022)Mel Han, ‘The Word for Pocket is “주머니”’, in Cosmic Daffodil Journal, xi (2025), pp. 19-20Mel Han, No Way of Returning Home (The Poetry Lighthouse, 2026)Mel's website: https://melaniehan.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.

Wales has an ancient tradition of storytelling. Listen to Rhiannon Marks discuss the Welsh short story, from the oldest tales of the British Isles to Wales’s contemporary short story writers. Rhiannon Marks is Senior Lecturer at the School of Welsh at the University of Cardiff where she specialises in 20th-21st century Welsh literature, creative literary criticism and literary theory.Works citedMihangel Morgan Te Gyda’r Frenhines (Gomer, 1994)Menna Elfyn Parch (Bloodaxe Books, 2025)Rhiannon Marks, Y dychymyg ôl-fodern: agweddau ar ffuglen fer Mihangel Morgan. (Caerdydd: University of Wales Press, 2020)The Mabinogion, trans. by Sioned Davies (Oxford University Press, 2008)Manon Steffan Ros (ed.), Dadeni (Sebra 2026)Alun Richards (ed), The Penguin Book of Welsh Short Stories (Penguin, 1976)Kate Roberts, The World of Kate Roberts: Selected Stories, 1925-1981, trans. by Joseph P. Clancy (Temple University Press, 1991)Kate Roberts, ‘The Quilt’, in The World of Kate Roberts: Selected Stories, 1925-1981, pp. 76-80 Rhiannon Marks, Crefft y Stori Fer Heddiw [The Art of the Short Story Today]. Caerdydd: Coleg Cymraeg Cenedlaethol (2019)Rachel Trezise, Fresh Apples (Parthian Books, 2006)Thomas Morris, We Don’t Know What We’re Doing (Faber and Faber, 2015)Caryl Lewis, Bitter Honey (Penguin, 2025)Fflur Dafydd, House of Water (Hodder & Stoughton, 2025)Nici Beech (ed), A New Welsh Tapestry: Six Short Stories by Contemporary Welsh Women Writers (Sampark Publications, 2026)Tu Chwith Magazine < https://archives.library.wales/index.php/tu-chwith >Y Stamp Magazine – see < https://www.ystamp.cymru >Meic Stephens, A White Afternoon: New Welsh Short Fiction (Parthian Books, 1999)Kristi Bohata et al. (eds), Queer Square Mile: Queer short stories from Wales (Parthian Books, 2022)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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.