Short StoriesTag

Call for Submissions: The Writers' Union of Canada 27th Annual Short Prose Competition for Emerging Writers

Attention new and emerging short story writers!The Writers' Union of Canada is now inviting submissions for its annual Short Prose Competition for Emerging Writers. Now in its 27th year, the Competition ...

"We Wanted to See Just How Nuts People Could Get" Sandra Kasturi on ChiZine's Hilarious "War on Christmas" Story Anthology

Maybe you're the person who can hardly wait until Halloween has passed before pulling out the winter holiday decorations — the person who is first in line for the first tree that's been chopped down, ...

"I Love How Short Fiction’s DNA Embodies the Broken" Elise Levine on Her New Story Collection & the Craft of Short Fiction

So much has been said - or rather, raved - about Elise Levine's fiction that an introduction to her writing could nearly be a book in itself. To pick just a few: NOW Magazine called her "A cutting-edge ...

Best Canadian Stories Editor Russell Smith on Short Fiction & the Importance of Variety

For more than 45 years, the most interesting, innovative, and memorable short stories of the year have been collected in Best Canadian Stories, with a list of past contributors that includes the likes ...

YOSS in 2018—and Beyond

It amazes and annoys me that short stories don’t get more respect.There is a certain face that too many literary agents and publishing people make when you mention short-story collections.<iframe ...

What I Talk About When I Talk About Talking Points

When a publisher agrees to publish your book—or at least, when both of my publishers agreed to publish my two books—the author is presented with a questionnaire. If you don’t overthink it, the questions ...

Make It New (Again)!

I was shocked a few years ago when, in a workshop I attended, a thirty-something writer who had already published a book (and has since gone on to publish two much more successful ones) dismissed the ...

Writing What You "Know"

I’m one of countless writers who found his way thanks to this old standby, and having just published a book of stories set in small Southwestern Ontario towns a lot like the ones where I grew up, it’s ...

Did You Really Go Through All That?

I stole the title of this post from a scene late in the film Sideways, but I could’ve taken a similar line from nearly anywhere—for instance, the second of Orhan Pamuk’s Norton Lectures (collected ...

Stepping Twice into the Same City

On a recent trip to read from my new book in Vancouver—my second trip there, the last being more than 12 years ago—I found myself in conversation with Heraclitus.Best known, according to Plato, for ...