Recommended Reading: Mallory Ortberg wrote an entire short story based on stage directions at The Toast.
“Exeunt all, except the Clown.”
“We were both crying when I left”
Millions staffer Michael Bourne has new fiction in the latest issue of The Cortland Review, and you can check out his story “San Francisco, Summer 1990” on their website.
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Shirley Jackson in the Woods
The New Yorker has published another recently discovered Shirley Jackson short story “The Man in the Woods,” a fairy tale that takes on some classic mythology. According to her son, it’s one of many new stories found in her archives, and we can expect a new collection next year. “What was surprising to us was not that she was so prolific and had left behind so much unseen work but, rather, the quality of that work,” Laurence Jackson Hyman said.
What We Want
Homework Diary is Currently Full
“Dear Mrs D, Thanks for your homework. Your idea of writing a Christmas ghost story was a good one, but it’s not really the kind of thing I tend to do — it’s a little bit too genre for my tastes. Try Kevin, who sits next to me. He loves that stuff.” Over at McSweeney’s, Nick Hornby advises his son on excuses for failing to hand in his English homework, excuses which Hornby learned are acceptable during a thirty-year career in journalism, books, and film.
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Speed Reading
Is your to-be-read list a little daunting? Check out some tips from BBC on how to read faster. If you’re looking for reading suggestions, check out our fiction and non-fiction previews.
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The King of Horror’s Poetry
“Perhaps this is why King favors prose—many of his novels and stories confront terror so enormous it transcends poetic language.” In Poetry Foundation, an essay about Stephen King‘s little known literary habit: writing poetry. Pair with: our editor Lydia Kiesling on discovering America through King’s novels.
“Life was not cake.”
Melville House has one of the short stories from Tao Lin’s Bed up for your noontime reading pleasure.