Sheila Julson, a classmate of mine at Redbird Writing Studio's roundtable group, wanted me to share some of her stories she's written on the blog, and so here it is. See how simple that is, aspiring writers? It's not scary. What's the point of writing sto

Thought I'd share a short story by Dawn Allen, whom I just so happen to know and can vouch for. Not sure why I'd ever have to vouch for her, since all you need to do is read her stuff to know she's got talent. This is a short story from A Fly in Amber, an

Maybe I should have used the subtitle "Do you care?" instead, but I prefer to look on the optimistic side of things whenever possible. Mainly because if I didn't, I would probably have shot myself in the head roughly around the same time I read

I was browsing through my few accomplishments over the past year and was looking up one of the literary mags that published one of my short stories, wondering if they were going to print up a copy or not. To my surprise, I found that all of their fiction

A fellow classmate from UN's MFA program has set up a "novel-in-progress" blog. What does that mean, exactly? Well, these types of blogs are traditionally put together by courageous souls willing to share their works in progress. In this case, D

I just got my first issue of The Missouri Review (TMR for you hipsters) and I have to say so far I'm pretty impressed. Sure, I've only delved into one of the stories so far, but the presentation of the journal is pretty impressive. It's well-designed, taking liberal advantage of the artistic eyes on staff, making it easy for the mag to stand out among its competitors.

It should, of course. The Missouri Review is one of the "it" mags, the one that published writers brag about. When you're published in The Missouri Review, this is how you react:

"Holy crap!" <

 Well, I'm back from my "vacation" at the University of Nebraska, just one short semester away from receiving my Master's Degree. I'm beat, but I managed to look up a few short-short stories that you might enjoy checking out while you're po

Upon leaving the theater last night, I found myself oddly perturbed. James Cameron spent ten years on AVATAR, and yet the script wasn't very well-written. My intellectual sparring partner asked me what, exactly, I expected from a science-fiction movie. We

Since the current Subtropics issue is only featuring poetry (but still worth checking out!), I had to dig to find something in the fiction department that I can share. This was another literary journal that I happened upon when I attended the AWP conferen

Sometimes, I happen upon new fiction purely out of luck. In this case, I was double-checking my SPAM folder and noticed that for some reason, my mail system was dropping emails from Black Lawrence Press there instead of my Inbox. May that be lesson to you

How about some short-short fiction to peruse while you're waiting for your favorite porn and/or news site to fully load? Here's the first half of Chris Smith's 50-word fiction piece from Blink Ink: I dreamed I was Don Quixote, imagining and then fi

In honor of Alice Munro's new short story collection, I though it might be nice to take a look at a recent short story from the New Yorker. I figure if you haven't tried reading her yet, this might be a good way to ease yourself in. Because she's a great

It's nice to occasionally read something that doesn't follow the traditional pattern for "story." That isn't to say seeing new and different approaches to fiction is always exciting, though, but sometimes a writer comes along with a special knac

I'm in the process of editing a bunch of new stuff I've been writing, and sometimes one of the best inspirations for trudging forward is to read some enjoyable fiction. Because you know something written well took a lot of work. From "Nothing Extr

Tonight at Boswell Books, Lorrie Moore will be making an appearance. Not only is she a fantastic author, she just so happens to be part of Wisconsin. Here new book, A Gate at the Stairs, has gotten great reviews and I bet she'll stick around to sign copie

I've taken a break from damaging my brain with copious amounts of Dragon Age to check out the progress of Cream City Review's new Web site, and it's looking fantastic. Easy to browse, lots of features and teasers for the issues, and a built-in blog with u

I hadn't noticed before that Ploughshares Literary Journal was so generous with their past issues, but now that I know it, I'm going to have to spend a lot more time on their site. If I had to guess, I would say that they probably keep their most recent i

I'm in the process of trudging through Moby-Dick, purely for the enjoyment of it (and yes, it turns out the story is quite enjoyable!), and I'm glad to see that Melville's signature writing style is at the forefront in this novel. My first experience wi

I think the first book I read from Milkweed Editions was Cracking India, a tale about a Pakistani girl growing up during the time when the British left India. In its wake: a mild amount of chaos, to say the least, and the eventual break-off of Pakistan in

Let's face it: Wal-Mart isn't going anywhere. Neither is Amazon.com, and while there are differences between the two, they basically offer the same system: undercut competitors by offering ridiculously low prices. Wal-Mart's good at doing this by outsourc

The first time I read a Sherman Alexie book, I was in my second year of college. We were looking at his book, Indian Killer, which somehow managed to touch on about a hundred different topics at once. A professor with a sconce of Indian blood in his bod

I mentioned this in a previous post but I thought it might be worth mentioning again simply because it definitely is one of my favorite literary journals out there right now. Maybe it's the glossy cover, or the smooth, thick pages. Probably not. Maybe i

After reading through Rolling Stone's recent "50 Reasons to Watch TV" article, I wondered if it might be possible to, at the very least, assemble some sort of argument for avoiding television. That isn't to say a little TV isn't bad I like to wa

It's time to get to know another Wisconsin writer. Mary Logue writes both fiction and poetry, lives on both sides of the Mississippi and occasionally makes rugs. Yup, we writers always have an interesting hobby or two ready and waiting whenever the task

I first heard about One Story a long time ago, when it was first starting out. The premise was simple: one story per issue, every three or so weeks, for a low price of just over a buck. To date, the stories publishing in One Story have been reprinted in T