| Story | Author | Picker | Session |
|---|---|---|---|
"Child Empress of Mars" A Martian court poet narrates the arrival of an Earth hero who turns out to be an everyman; the villain and trap are staged without his knowledge, and translation is visual: people only see what they already understand. "Demanifesting" as the word for dying. Theme: "Lite or Light." Session, all-play. Rescheduled from Aug 21 to Aug 19 for Hannah's Vancouver trip. All Play. #sci-fi#fairy-tale#open-ending#45#7 | Theodora Goss (Letters from an Imaginary Country) [John] | All Play | August 2026 |
"When You Meet the Buddha in the Road" A kid on a family road trip run entirely in therapy-speak (family hero, family mascot, feelings deducted from allowances) finally gets herself a cause and an effect at the aquarium. Deeply sad and very funny at once. Theme: "Lite or Light." Session, all-play. Rescheduled from Aug 21 to Aug 19 for Hannah's Vancouver trip. All Play. #family#childhood#humor#first-person#devastating-ending#45#7 | Mi Ditmar (Prairie Schooner | All Play | August 2026 |
"The Remarkable Rocket" Wilde's most self-important firework is certain the prince's wedding is held in his honor; "pylotechnic," doubled down on. JC saw Trump in the 1880s and found it comforting. Theme: "Lite or Light." Session, all-play. Rescheduled from Aug 21 to Aug 19 for Hannah's Vancouver trip. All Play. #satire#fairy-tale#humor#45#7 | Oscar Wilde (The Happy Prince and Other Tales | All Play | August 2026 |
"The Entire Northern Side Was Covered with Fire" Everyone has read the ex-husband's blog ("I Can't Stand My Wife"); the pregnant narrator would rather source a replacement parmesan grater. "It was my life that was lying in the middle of my life... like a poleaxed wildebeest." Theme: "Lite or Light." Session, all-play. Rescheduled from Aug 21 to Aug 19 for Hannah's Vancouver trip. All Play. #realist#first-person#marriage#humor#45#7 | Rivka Galchen (American Innovations | All Play | August 2026 |
"Palace Fortress" An enforcer of a Stalin-like regime walks the machinery of punishment he built, and then walks home. Told with almost no interiority; whether the flatness is the point is the argument. "Dzh" is short for Dzhugashvili, Stalin's real name. #politics#identity#open-ending | Ken Kalfus | John | July 2026 |
A man tells the story of his own betrayal from the honorable man's side, in reverse, so his listener will despise him properly. "Whatsoever one man does, it is as though all men did it." #frame-story#twist#politics#identity | Jorge Luis Borges | John | July 2026 |
"He Looked Nothing Like His Profile Picture" A first date built on small lies that compound until the narrator dreams she is her own wife. App-era identity in three pages. #realist#love#identity#twist | Harris | John | July 2026 |
"The Breakfast" A young woman comes down to breakfast carrying a nightmare that refuses to stay one; "her face was a devastated field." Dávila compresses dread into a single morning. #horror#family#devastating-ending | Amparo Dávila | Ruben | June 2026 |
"A Village After Dark" A man arrives at night in a village where he was once important, and the dream-logic never breaks. A proof-of-concept for The Unconsoled; Ben Marcus called it "restrained." #surreal#aging#politics#open-ending | Kazuo Ishiguro | Ruben | June 2026 |
"The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas" A utopia priced on one child's suffering, subtitled "Variations on a theme by William James." The walking-away is the question, not the answer. #fairy-tale#politics#open-ending | Ursula K. Le Guin | Hannah | May 2026 |
"The Ones Who Stay and Fight" Jemisin's direct reply to Le Guin: what if you stayed? A utopia defended by enforcement, which is its own trap. #sci-fi#politics | N.K. Jemisin | Hannah | May 2026 |
"Kaleidoscope" Bradbury's astronauts falling to Earth after their ship breaks up, talking until they burn. #sci-fi#death#devastating-ending | Ray Bradbury | Hannah | May 2026 |
"Willing" A failed actress moves from LA to a Chicago motel; "I never had... I just had a can of gravy and a hairbrush." Sad without being depressing, in Moore's surprising little bursts of language. #realist#love#identity | Lorrie Moore | JC | April 2026 |
"100 Years of Forgiveness" A dreamlike childhood memory of stealing roses from rich gardens. "A thief of roses... has 100 years of forgiveness." #childhood#first-person#surreal | Clarice Lispector | JC | April 2026 |
"Dacey's Patent Automatic Nanny" A Victorian machine built to raise children rationally, told as a museum catalog entry. Mechanical parenting and what it costs. #sci-fi#family#metafiction | Ted Chiang | John | March 2026 |
"The Mark on the Wall" Woolf's narrator circles a small mark on the wall and lets the mind go everywhere else; one of the first stories off the Woolfs' own Hogarth Press. #first-person#art-and-writing#open-ending | Virginia Woolf | John | March 2026 |
"Channel Four" Childhood memory through scrambled cable TV and brass reflections. #realist#childhood#place | Michael Sears | John | March 2026 |
"The Aforementioned Journal" Overwrought but genuine metafiction, "macaroni on macaroni." #metafiction#art-and-writing | David Hollander | Ruben | February 2026 |
An angel crash-lands in a muddy courtyard and becomes a sideshow attraction. "The world had been sad since Tuesday." #fairy-tale#surreal#faith | Gabriel García Márquez | Ruben | February 2026 |
"A Poor-Aunt Story" A writer's hypothetical poor aunt materializes on his back and won't leave; a story about the people memory quietly discards. #surreal#identity#art-and-writing | Haruki Murakami | Hannah | January 2026 |
"Can Only Houses Be Haunted" A contemporary haunting that asks where ghosts are allowed to live. #surreal#grief#place | Marie-Hélène Bertino | Hannah | January 2026 |
"Plants, Stones, Dirt, and Sky" A couple of about a hundred dig their own grave as a last practical act, bickering over what to bring; they lie down in it, find it comfortable, and agree not to answer the gate. A parable with a sweetness and a harshness that are both real. All Play. #fairy-tale#death#aging#marriage | Yan Lianke | JC | December 2025 |
"Wing's Chips" A child's summer in a Quebec river town, her English painter father, and the sign he paints for the Chinese cafe. Memory holding on to one good thing. All Play. #realist#childhood#family#place | Mavis Gallant | Hannah | December 2025 |
"Repent, Harlequin! Said the Ticktockman" A dystopia where lateness is a crime and one man's jelly beans jam the schedule. All Play. #sci-fi#satire#politics | Harlan Ellison | Ruben | December 2025 |
"My Dear You" A woman dies on her honeymoon and lands in an afterlife where her memory of her soulmate dissolves; time loops instead of ending. All Play. #surreal#death#love#all-play | Rachel Khong | John | December 2025 |
"Unreasonable" A scientist testing whether bees can teach each other, while being accused of failing to teach her own daughter. The last word goes to a man past fear: given everything, "it would be radically unreasonable to come to any other conclusion." #realist#family#work#open-ending | Rivka Galchen | JC | November 2025 |
"Hunter's Moon" A retired casket salesman walks the Michigan woods near his house, naming things and trying not to, toward what may be his last night. An unsentimental portrayal of sentiment; found in a box of discarded Grantas. #realist#death#aging#first-person | Thomas Lynch | JC | November 2025 |
"Signs and Symbols" Elderly parents choose a birthday present for their institutionalized son, who reads the whole world as a message about himself. Then the phone rings. One of the great endings. #realist#family#devastating-ending#open-ending | Vladimir Nabokov | John | October 2025 |
"Origin Story" Two erstwhile lovers, one a superhero, meet at an abandoned Land of Oz theme park; melancholy played straight in a world of levitating waitresses. #surreal#love#place | Kelly Link | John | October 2025 |
"The Lesson" Two married men travel to an island wedding while their surrogate's pregnancy turns precarious; Link fencing the fantastic out, mostly. #realist#marriage#family | Kelly Link | John | October 2025 |
"Artist" From Atavists, Millet's linked Los Angeles stories titled by type; contemporary to the point of bruising. #realist#art-and-writing#place | Lydia Millet | Ruben | September 2025 |
"After the Denim" An older couple's bingo night is spoiled by a young couple cheating; under it, an illness nobody at the table can see. #realist#aging#marriage | Raymond Carver | Ruben | September 2025 |
George Willard and Helen White at the fair after dark, the moment youth takes "the backward view of life." Winesburg's quiet peak. All Play. #realist#coming-of-age#place | Sherwood Anderson | Hannah | August 2025 |
"Point of View" Berlin narrates a lonely woman's Saturday while explaining why she's telling it in third person. The seams are the story. All Play. #metafiction#art-and-writing#first-person | Lucia Berlin | Ruben | August 2025 |
"The Fête" A village flower show embarks on "its short, eager life" and ends in catastrophe; built from a real 1891 invitation with the disaster copied on its back. All Play. #realist#place#devastating-ending | Tom Crewe | JC | August 2025 |
"The Man Stopped" Possibly Nabokov's last unpublished story (1926, surfaced 2015): a man stops mid-journey, removes his boots, and walks barefoot toward the Polish border, in a parody of Soviet pseudo-folk style. All Play. #satire#art-and-writing#all-play | Vladimir Nabokov | John | August 2025 |
"Walter, Like Water" A contemporary Los Angeles riff on Cheever. #realist#place#class | A.M. Homes | JC | June 2025 |
Neddy Merrill swims home pool by pool across the county while the seasons, and his life, slide out from under him. #surreal#class#devastating-ending | John Cheever | JC | June 2025 |
The village ritual that made 1948 New Yorker readers cancel their subscriptions. #horror#politics#twist | Shirley Jackson | John | May 2025 |
"Procession of the Black Sloth" Cosmic horror in expat Hong Kong, novella-length surveillance dread. #horror#place#too-long | Laird Barron | John | May 2025 |
"Cinnamon Shops" A boy sent home for his father's wallet lets the night streets of his town rearrange themselves into dream. Both authors are also visual artists. #surreal#childhood#place | Bruno Schulz | Ruben | April 2025 |
"Speaking of Bashies" Presented as a story, revealed to be an essay: a family invents a breed name for their dog and the invented name changes what people see. On naming, and the ethics of a good lie. Both authors are also visual artists. #realist#identity#family | A. Kendra Greene | Ruben | April 2025 |
A rest-cure patient and the wallpaper she is left alone with. Gilman, divorced by 1894, was "an early adopter of divorce." #horror#marriage#unreliable#first-person | Charlotte Perkins Gilman | Hannah | March 2025 |
A man visits the axolotls at the aquarium until the glass stops mattering. #surreal#identity#twist | Julio Cortázar | Hannah | March 2025 |
"Up in the Gallery" Kafka's one-paragraph double vision of a circus rider, and which version we can live with. #surreal#open-ending | Franz Kafka | Hannah | March 2025 |
"The Particles of Order" Li's characters live inside literature; one says, "My life is a William Trevor story." #realist#metafiction#grief | Yiyun Li | JC | February 2025 |
"The Piano Tuner's Wife" A blind piano tuner remarries; the second wife tunes the house against the memory of the first. Trevor is "the Irish Chekhov." #realist#marriage#aging | William Trevor | JC | February 2025 |
"The Little Flashes" A lonely divorced lawyer narrates her affair with her carpenter, a separated husband, and the slow claim his daughter Dot makes on her. #realist#love#first-person | Greg Shutz | John | January 2025 |
"The Girl Who Did Not Know Fear" Link rewires the old tale of the boy who couldn't shudder. #fairy-tale#surreal#open-ending | Kelly Link | John | January 2025 |
"Revision" Rumors move through an Oxford college that students are being tracked by their library cards; the rumor mutates with each teller, from eugenics conspiracy to rankings hygiene. #satire#class#politics | Daisy Hildyard | John | January 2025 |
A parrot at the Arecibo telescope asks why humans listen so hard to the stars and not to the talking species going extinct beside them. Commissioned as a museum video installation. All Play. #sci-fi#death#first-person | Ted Chiang | JC | December 2024 |
"Wait a Minute" Berlin on the days after her sister's death, where grief hides in errands. All Play. #realist#grief#death | Lucia Berlin | Hannah | December 2024 |
Mrs. Mallard gets one hour of imagined freedom; came recommended by Ruben's dad, who taught the classics. All Play. #realist#marriage#twist#devastating-ending#all-play | Kate Chopin | Ruben | December 2024 |
"I Like All Colors" On memory and the fear of invention: "The older I get, the more I am drawn to what is incomplete. Unfinished paintings, uncompleted books..." Three endings from Freeman's Conclusions anthology. #realist#art-and-writing#identity | Semezdin Mehmedinovic | Ruben | November 2024 |
"Pillory" A son inventories his father the way his father inventoried erasers and toy cars: beige ledgers as "the sum of his working days." "I always wanted to have known my father before I entered his life." Three endings from Freeman's Conclusions anthology. #realist#family#work#first-person | Omar El Akkad | Ruben | November 2024 |
"The Creek, the Wind, the Holly" Johnson's essay of endings in the natural world. Three endings from Freeman's Conclusions anthology. #realist#place#anthology | Lacy Johnson | Ruben | November 2024 |
"Little Rabbit" A fable of a Soviet-era orphanage for disabled infants, escaped by a girl guided out by what she takes for a saint under the linoleum. "A small, secret relief for the overworked attendants: not all babies learn to crawl." Read with Eula Biss's "Time and Distance Overcome" alongside: an essay that follows telephone poles into the history of lynching. #fairy-tale#childhood#politics#devastating-ending | Maria Reva | Hannah | October 2024 |
"Slumberland" A bereaved photographer drives Orlando at night because she can't stand her neighbor's wailing; the neighbor, it turns out, weeps professionally. Then a ghost shows up in a photo of her backseat. Read with Eula Biss's "Time and Distance Overcome" alongside: an essay that follows telephone poles into the history of lynching. #realist#grief#surreal | Laura van den Berg | Hannah | October 2024 |
"Gimpel the Fool" The town fool who chooses belief over humiliation, every time, and wins something the town can't see. Translated by Saul Bellow. #fairy-tale#faith#first-person | Isaac Bashevis Singer | JC | September 2024 |
"Invented Jewish Tales" Folktales that never existed, told with the specific language of ones that did: a white-haired baby who eats a region into famine, a burned village whose writer can only "offer an isness that isn't is anymore." #fairy-tale#faith#metafiction | Sam Sax | JC | September 2024 |
"Job History" A whole Wyoming life told as a resume, no scenes, all weight. All Play. #realist#work#class | Annie Proulx | JC | August 2024 |
"The Crossing" A father takes his young son across a river he's crossed before; the river has other plans. All Play. #realist#family#open-ending | Mark Slouka | John | August 2024 |
"A Quarreling Pair" Bowles's short puppet play: two puppet sisters bickering over safety versus freedom inside one intimate room. All Play. #satire#family | Jane Bowles | Hannah | August 2024 |
"Forever Overhead" A boy on the high-dive ladder on his thirteenth birthday, in second person, one decision long. All Play. #realist#coming-of-age#second-person#all-play | David Foster Wallace | Ruben | August 2024 |
"A Small Good Thing" A boy's birthday cake, an accident, and a baker who calls and calls; it ends with bread at 3am and nowhere else to be. #realist#grief#family | Raymond Carver | John | July 2024 |
Akaky Akakievich saves for the coat that finally makes him visible. The clerk story all Russian literature allegedly came out of. #realist#class#work#devastating-ending | Nikolai Gogol | John | July 2024 |
"The Company of Others" A middle-aged woman privately doubts her daughter's love and her own path, and finds herself pursuing her husband's ex and the ex's daughter. The resolution isn't triumphant; it's time passing. #realist#family#marriage#identity | Sara Freeman | Ruben | June 2024 |
"Annunciation" A young woman decamps to the Bay Area after college: a German landlady who says "we have art so as not to die of the truth," a friend in a Vanagon, and a betrayal reckoned with years later. "Grace is a gift undeserved, yet given anyway." #realist#coming-of-age#faith#first-person | Lauren Groff | Ruben | June 2024 |
"The Devourings" An ogre's wife after the ogre eats their children by mistake; fairy-tale grief with an image system near the end that's downright incredible. #fairy-tale#grief#marriage | Aimee Bender | Hannah | May 2024 |
"The Floating Bridge" Jinny gets remission news she doesn't share, and a kiss on a floating bridge she didn't plan. #realist#marriage#death#open-ending | Alice Munro | Hannah | May 2024 |
"Kansas" Gilead-world Robinson: prodigal Jack at his father's house, grace offered and dodged. #realist#family#faith | Marilynne Robinson | JC | April 2024 |
A dying father asks his writer daughter for one simple story; she can't keep hope out of it, he can't let it in. #metafiction#family#death#art-and-writing | Grace Paley | JC | April 2024 |
"Whoever is There, Come on Through" Small-town Mayo: Eileen, armor-plated, and her depressed oldest friend Murt, out of the hospital a fourth time. The title is the etiquette of an unlocked front door. #realist#place#open-ending | Colin Barrett | John | March 2024 |
A burned-out book critic heckles a bank robber; the bullet finds the one memory that still matters. "They is, they is." #realist#death#devastating-ending | Tobias Wolff | John | March 2024 |
"Raymond's Run" Squeaky Parker, the fastest thing on two feet in Harlem, discovers mid-race what her brother Raymond could be. #realist#childhood#family#child-narrator | Toni Cade Bambara | Ruben | February 2024 |
"Crown Heights North" A man dead of cancer at fifty-five narrates his afterlife, which inexplicably includes a running-app coach. Dying, disappointingly, teaches him nothing: "Running, like death, happens to you." #surreal#death#aging | Rivka Galchen | Ruben | February 2024 |
"The Semplica Girl Diaries" A striving dad's diary of the lawn ornament every good family wants; the ornaments are people. Two diaristic frames, wildly dark and wildly funny and wildly strange. #satire#class#diaristic#devastating-ending | George Saunders | Hannah | January 2024 |
"Christina the Astonishing" The medieval saint who flew out of her own funeral, told from inside the family that had to live with her. Two diaristic frames, wildly dark and wildly funny and wildly strange. #faith#family#surreal#diaristic | Kirstin Valdez Quade | Hannah | January 2024 |
Sleeps through a revolution, wakes to a country that changed its king; Irving is buried in Sleepy Hollow Cemetery. All Play. #fairy-tale#politics#aging | Washington Irving | Ruben | December 2023 |
"Cortes the Killer" A daughter home for Thanksgiving on the last farm among the outdoor malls rides the old horse to Walmart; farce curdles into realism on the ice. All Play. #realist#family#devastating-ending | Samantha Hunt | Hannah | December 2023 |
"The Perfume Thief" A young critic whose taste outstrips her means works an art gallery job, mostly by getting fired and stealing. Witty on scent, class, and early adulthood. All Play. #realist#work#class#first-person#all-play | Susan Finley | JC | December 2023 |
"If it keeps on raining" A man alone by a rising river, building the flood in his mind. #realist#place#open-ending | Jon McGregor | JC | November 2023 |
"Gogol" A boy named for the author his father survived a train wreck reading. #realist#family#identity | Jhumpa Lahiri | JC | November 2023 |
"Heart" Northeast China, fathers, and a chauffeur who falls asleep and stays dreamed-about long after the story ends. #realist#family#open-ending | Shuang Xuetao | JC | November 2023 |
"The Husband Stitch" The girl with the green ribbon, retold as a life; everyone knows how it ends, which is the horror. All Play. #horror#marriage#fairy-tale#first-person | Carmen Maria Machado | Hannah | October 2023 |
"The Last Rung on the Ladder" No monsters: a brother, a sister, a barn ladder, and what trust costs later. All Play. #realist#family#grief#devastating-ending | Stephen King | John | October 2023 |
"Red Wind" Opens on the Santa Anas that make "meek little wives feel the edge of the carving knife." All Play. #crime#place#first-person | Raymond Chandler | JC | October 2023 |
"October in the Chair" The months of the year swap stories around a fire; October's is about a boy who runs away. All Play. #fairy-tale#frame-story#death#all-play | Neil Gaiman | Ruben | October 2023 |
A cold Good Friday, two widows at a fire, and Peter's denial suddenly present-tense; Chekhov called it his favorite of his own stories. With Barthelme's "The School" alongside: everything the class adopts dies, deadpan, until the children ask the real question. #realist#faith | Anton Chekhov | Ruben | September 2023 |
"Rainbows" An Irish academic in Manhattan, badly mentored after her own long-ago assault, overcorrects when her daughter is harassed at school; the ending returns to Ireland, "so many rainbows that we stopped looking for them." With Barthelme's "The School" alongside: everything the class adopts dies, deadpan, until the children ask the real question. #realist#family#identity | Joseph O'Neill | Ruben | September 2023 |
"Does a Bee Care" An alien seed grows into a being who nudges scientists toward spaceflight for millennia without knowing why, then stows away to the Moon; the closing analogy is the pollinating bee. #sci-fi#twist | Isaac Asimov | Hannah | August 2023 |
"Madame Bovary's Greyhound" Emma Bovary's dog catches her despair, then runs. Flaubert from the floor's eye view. #surreal#metafiction#love | Karen Russell | Hannah | August 2023 |
"Between Zero and One" Korean SF braiding quantum physics and time travel with grief: a bereaved mother, a stranger who knows too much about time, and the school pressure-cooker underneath. #sci-fi#grief#childhood | Bo Young Kim | John | July 2023 |
Anson Hunter and the sentence everyone misquotes: "They are different from you and me." Superiority as a slow leak. #realist#class#love | F. Scott Fitzgerald | John | July 2023 |
"Brutto" A painter once forced by her father to prove herself by sewing a suit is rediscovered by an art impresario who wants copies of the suit as artworks; an art-world satire that descends into a personal inferno. #satire#art-and-writing#work | Helen DeWitt | JC | June 2023 |
"The Fall of Edward Barnard" Chicago sends its most promising man to Tahiti to make his fortune; he finds a better definition of one. #realist#class#place#identity | Somerset Maugham | JC | June 2023 |
"The Moor" A middle-aged man runs into his first lover, now eighty, in a diner; the whole story is one conversation about what he was, what he is, and whether he'll admit it. He wants to stand in the snow watching it fill their tracks. Both from Murakami's Birthday Stories anthology. #realist#aging#love#first-person | Russell Banks | Ruben | May 2023 |
"Angel of Mercy, Angel of Wrath" Crows fly into an old woman's apartment on the birthday her son forgot; the stranger who comes to shoo them out gives her more than he does. Both from Murakami's Birthday Stories anthology. #realist#aging#family#anthology | Ethan Canin | Ruben | May 2023 |
A sorcerer dreams a man into existence, organ by organ, and the fire knows the rest. #surreal#twist#identity | Jorge Luis Borges | John | April 2023 |
"High-Water Railers" Old men on a Mississippi spillway pier, trading grief and one enormous fish. #realist#aging#place#grief | Barry Hannah | John | April 2023 |
"Story of Your Life" Learning the heptapods' language rewires how a linguist experiences time, and her daughter's whole life arrives at once; the source of Arrival. #sci-fi#family#first-person | Ted Chiang | Ruben | March 2023 |
Humanity asks ever-larger computers how to reverse entropy. INSUFFICIENT DATA FOR MEANINGFUL ANSWER, until. #sci-fi#faith#twist | Isaac Asimov | Ruben | March 2023 |
Newlyweds on the train to their honeymoon, saying everything except the thing. #satire#marriage | Dorothy Parker | JC/Ruben | February 2023 |
"History of a Disturbance" A man stops trusting words and writes his wife a long confession, in words. #realist#marriage#identity#first-person | Steven Millhauser | JC/Ruben | February 2023 |
"Cathedral" A jealous husband, his wife's blind friend, and a cathedral drawn with four hands. It ends with eyes closed. #realist#first-person#love | Raymond Carver | Ruben | January 2023 |
"Foster" A girl spends a summer with the Kinsellas and learns what care feels like; the walk to the well, the coat, the last word. #realist#childhood#family#child-narrator | Claire Keegan | Ruben | January 2023 |
"The Lame Shall Enter First" A reformer father saves a club-footed delinquent and sacrifices his own grieving son to the project. Self-deluded parents become monsters. #realist#family#faith#devastating-ending | Flannery O'Connor | JC | December 2022 |
"The Mom of Bold Action" A mom's churning writer-brain meets a real threat to her kid, and the bold action isn't what she drafted. Self-deluded parents become monsters. #satire#family#art-and-writing | George Saunders | JC | December 2022 |
"The Snows of Kilimanjaro" Harry dying of gangrene on safari, cataloguing every story he'll now never write, with the leopard frozen near the summit. Men fucking it up. #realist#death#art-and-writing | Ernest Hemingway | JC | November 2022 |
"A King Alone" George, a sixty-year-old songwriter "undeterred in his habits and pursuits," road-tripping the South and failing his Nashville daughter again; hugely flawed, and you want him to have a happy ending anyway. Men fucking it up. #realist#family#aging#identity | Rachel Kushner | JC | November 2022 |
Four friends meeting monthly since 2022 to discuss short stories. One person picks two stories, everyone reads, we talk for 75 minutes on Google Meet.
"Two stories, two different authors, hopefully two different time periods. I feel like we're reading good stuff and have good conversations. That's all I wanted out of the group." — JC, Jan 2023
What we like: older narrator reflecting on childhood · ambiguous endings · devastating final paragraphs · stories that reward re-reading · short enough to read twice · increasing bewilderment