May is Short Story Month

Last year was a good year for short stories and short story writers. Not only was master storyteller Alice Munro awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature, but Tenth of December, George Saunders’ latest story collection, was named a National Book Award Finalist.

In honor of Short Story Month, I’m posting a shelfie of the Library’s short story collection.  The bright yellow book facing forward is Karen Russell’s Vampires in the Lemon Grove, eight beautifully bizarre stories which Joy Williams, writing for the New York Times, calls “dazzling.”

Now, a confession. I fudged the photo so I could showcase Russell’s latest work. At our Library, story collections written by a single author are shelved at the end of that author’s fictional oeuvre, so you would find Vampires after Russell’s novel, Swamplandia!  Only anthologies (collections of short stories by multiple authors) appear in the Library’s short story collection located in the central Fiction aisle. If you're ever unsure where to find something, just ask. And, yes, the hanging bat is fake, too.