A Small, Good Thing

• William Saroyan: Life at Full Volume (with Scott Setrakian)

  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]

  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]

  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)

  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.

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• Short Fiction and Knowledge for Living (with Michael Basseler)

  How does the short story form contribute to our understanding of life and the world? To find out, listen to this episode of the podcast, in which I get to interview prof. Michael Basseler, from Justus-Liebig University, author of the monograph An Organon of Life Knowledge: Genres and Functions of the Short Story in North America.Works cited:Michael Basseler, An Organon of Life Knowledge: Genres and Functions of the Short Story in North America (Transcript Verlag, 2019).Ottomar Ette, ‘Literature as Knowledge for Living, Literary Studies as Science for Living’, PMLA 125.4 (2010), pp. 977-93.Charles Baxter, ‘Against Epiphanies’, in Burning Down the House. Essays on Fiction. (Graywolf Press, 1997), pp. 51-78. Sherwood Anderson, ‘I Want to Know Why’, in The Triumph of the Egg (W. B. Huebsch, 1921). Washington Irving, ‘Rip Van Winkle’, in The Legend of Sleepy Hollow and Other Stories (Penguin, 2014).Zach Williams, Beautiful Days (Penguin, 2024).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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