Short and Sweet: Short Stories for All Tastes

May is Short Story Month, and this year All Lit Up celebrates this under-appreciated form with Short and Sweet, a little series featuring 12 short story collections and their authors, who share brief thoughts on the short form.

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How’s your attention span lately?Let’s put it this way: are you more likely to opt for an entire season of TV rather than one single film? The short story is the literary answer to the TV-watcher’s dilemma. Like a TV show, it encapsulates an entire plot arc in a short span of time, but hints at more. It sits among a “season” – we call them collections, folks – of its fellows. You can likely finish one in ~30 minutes. And, like a lot of TV produced since The Sopranos, short stories are excellent, allow their authors to explore new narrative devices and get into the meat of a character’s problem right away.Short and Sweet is All Lit Up’s celebration of the short story for 2022. Tune in every Tuesday this month to catch up with 12 authors, their collections, and their thoughts about short story writing. And, read short samples of their short stories to get a taste for one of our favourite literary forms.

Coming up on Short and Sweet:

Week 1 (Tuesday, May 3):

Chih-Ying Lay and Home Sickness (Linda Leith Publications) | featureAaron Schneider and What We Think We Know (Gordon Hill Press) | feature

Week 2 (Tuesday, May 10):

Sofi Papamarko and Radium Girl (Wolsak & Wynn) | featureH. Felix Chau Bradley and Personal Attention Roleplay (Metonymy Press) | featureKatie Bickell and Always Brave, Sometimes Kind (Brindle & Glass) | feature

Week 3 (Tuesday, May 17):

Terry Doyle and Dig (Breakwater Books) | featureAlex Pugsley and Shimmer (Bibiloasis) | feature

Week 4 (Tuesday, May 24):

Silmy Abdullah and Home of the Floating Lily (Dundurn Press) | featurePhoebe Tsang and Setting Fire to Water (Thistledown Press) | featureElizabeth Allua Vaah and Maame (Mawenzi House) | feature

Week 5 (Tuesday, May 31):

Brent Van Staalduinen and Cut Road (Guernica Editions) | featureDayle Furlong and Lake Effect (Cormorant Books) | featureDon’t forget to check in with us here and on our socials @alllitupcanada with the hashtag #ALUShortandSweet to enjoy a little sweet shortness – or is it short sweetness? – all month long.