Get ready, prose writers: the poets are about to pass the pen to you!
May is Short Story Month!
Read all about it here: http://shortstorymonth.com/about/
Find interviews, prompts, contests, challenges, and other juicy tidbits here: https://storyaday.org/
If you need encouragement, Ann R. Allen offers 13 reasons why you should write a short story this month: https://annerallen.com/2015/05/13-reasons-why-you-should-write-shor/
And if you are all written out for the nonce (I feel you, fellow poets!) the Emerging Writers Network has a list of 74 short story collections that were slated for publication this year: https://emergingwriters.typepad.com/emerging_writers_network/short_story_month/. Some of these will no doubt be in your local library.
My own recommendation for a short story collection is Tom Hanks’ Uncommon Type, which I picked up earlier this year at our very own Eastside Branch. The stories are quite different from one another, but I enjoyed them very much, not the least because I could hear Hanks’ voice in my head as I read.
If new fiction just isn’t your cup of tea, break out something more classic:
Mark Twain, Marge Piercy, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Virginia Woolf, Ray Bradbury, Margaret Atwood, Ernest Hemingway, James Baldwin, Shirley Jackson, Saki, Doris Lessing, Isaac Bashevis Singer, Katherine Anne Porter, Jack London, P.L. Travers, Stephen King, Ursula LeGuin, Kazuo Ishiguro . . .
There are 31 days in May. Make sure you set aside part of at least one of them for a short story.
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