Writing Stories

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In this episode Series Editor Nicole Lamy and featured author Jessica Treadway talk about the Best American Short Stories Anthology 2025. The episode covers:
Trends among the stories
Who reads the anthology in 2026 and how representation may show up differently
How to define a contemporary short story

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In this episode Pat Lipsky talks about her acclaimed new memoir Brightening Glance and covers:
What having a space means as an artist and the discipline necessary to endure
Her life in the New York City art scene from 1960s to present day, including accounts of experiences with Tony Smith and Pierre Rosenberg
The role Marcel Proust has played in her life and work
And the experience of entering the publishing world from the perspective of a seasoned painter

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In this episode Marguerite Sheffer talks about Iowa Short Fiction Prize winning collection The Man in the Banana Trees and covers:
the content of Marguerite's wide ranging speculative fiction stories that dive deeply into the practice of making art and some of our most critical justice issues in our culture
how design thinking helped Marguerite get to a place of wildness and fierce play and pleasure with these stories
what it was like to win the 2024 Iowa Short Fiction Prize and how it has changed her professional life
how writing groups and community played a role in completing this collection
what experimentation and sense of creative destruction can lead to in a creative practice

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In this episode T Clark talks about All This Want and I Can't Get None and covers:
the content of T's feverish and honest short stories about girlhood, shame, want, and choices
how T found an agent
what the path to a book deal looked like
how living in a certain place can foster a more balanced writing life
how writing collaborative plays has informed their fiction

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In this episode Samantha Browning Shea talks about MARROW and covers:
writing her own book as a literary agent for others
when her first novel didn't find a publisher
writing with small children 
writing characters in the context of their relationships 
worry over whether a book will work 
find out more about Samantha here
pre-order Marrow here
Learn more about the upcoming host of Writing Stories Jessica Kinnison here