Short stories are hot!

Take Junot Díaz’s NYT Best Seller This Is How You Lose Her.  Those familiar with Díaz previous fiction, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao and Drown, will recognize the amorous, masculine, storytelling voice of Yunior, a reckless Dominican immigrant.  In a review for NPR Books, poet Carmen Gimenez Smith speculates that Yunior “might some day rank with Philip Roth’s Nathan Zuckerman or John Updike’s Harry Angstrom as an enduring American literary protagonist who embodies the peculiar struggle men face.”  You can listen to Díaz discuss men, women, and relationships in an interview entitled "Fidelity in Fiction" on Morning Edition.  In addition to the success of his short story collection, Díaz, who teaches at MIT,  was recently named one of 23 MacArthur Fellows for 2012.

Expect a different, yet no less masterful, collection from Canadian octogenarian, Alice Munro.  Munro’s Dear Life: Stories will be released on November 13.  In a pre-publication review, Booklist gives Munro “unreserved praise for the continued wonderment provided by arguably the best short-story writer in English today.”  Munro is the acclaimed author of numerous short story collections, novels and screenplays.   Even if you don’t typically read short stories, you may remember the 2006 movie Away from Her starring Julie Christie, a heartbreaking examination of Alzheimer’s effects on a marriage.  Away from Her was adapted from Munro’s “The Bear Came Over the Mountain” which you can read online in The New Yorker Magazine.

For other great short story collections by Flannery O'Connor, Eudora Welty, Dan Chaon, Anton Chekhov, O. Henry and Joyce Carol Oates visit the Library's catalog.