Best American Short Stories Highlights β¨, Fashionista Dogs ππΆοΈπ©, and Book Binding in the Rockies ποΈ
An Academy of Book Binding ππͺ‘ in the mountains of Telluride, Colorado ποΈ
This week, Writing Atlas headed to Telluride, Colorado, which is a very hard place to get to. At the end of the nineteenth century, this mining town was at the cutting edge of technology for being the first place in the world powered by alternating current. These days the population center of 2,500 feels a bit more isolated. Not only does it have one of the most dangerous airports in the world, but itβs a 1.5+ hour drive from any of the airports serviced by national carriers, sometimes even longer.
But if you arrive in this town during the spring and summer months, youβll be rewarded with the American Academy of Book Binding, a 30-year-old art institution which attracts students from all around the world, some of whom have called their time there βthe best week of their lives.β
The academy offers 1-2 week courses on everything from titling in gold to leather binding. Classes start at $950 plus materials costs for a 5-day session, and the courses are limited to no more than 12 students. There are no courses during the winter (since skiers gobble up all the winter housing), but Writing Atlas got a nice tour from their director of marketing, which you can read about below the story curation.
Our next newsletter is from Heidi Pitlor, a seasoned editor whose work has spanned The Best American Short Stories, Plympton, and her own editorial firm, Heidi Pitlor Editorial. You can visit her website and her own Substack to learn more about her brilliant work. While youβre here, you get to read about some of the short stories that she finds awesome, including advance knowledge about some that have made the cut for the upcoming edition of The Best American Short Stories and even some debuts of fresh, new, exciting voices. (Years later, youβll be able to say that you read Suzanne Wang before everyone else.) In fact, the Writing Atlas team had the privilege of being one of the initial readers of Wang β and our hope for Writing Atlas is for you too to discover more great stories, and elevate them for consideration in BASS or Hollywood or beyond!!
Stories Wonderful in their Own Way, by Heidi Pitlor
Asking me to pick just 3-5 short stories that I love is like asking me to pick my favorite food or book or singer. There are far too many, and each is wonderful in its own way. Yes, I am a mother.
Below are 5 stories that I recently taught and/or that were chosen for The Best American Short Stories. After 18 years as the series editor of this annually published book, I feel no more confident in my ability to define the best of anything, but I can chat about these stories that I recently spent time with, at least, and can hopefully inspire you to go read them.
"The Great Silence," Ted Chiang
This story slid in the door when I was working with Junot Diaz on the 2016 volume. He taught at MIT, and had found it on βe-flux,β an MIT βpublishing platform and archive, artist project, curatorial platform, and enterprise.β Junot thought it was good, but he seemed a bit tentative, unsure. I read it and understood his hesitation. Itβs short. It completely abandons every rule espoused by pretty much every writing teacher, rules like βShow, donβt tellβ and βDonβt write from the point of view of animalsβ and βestablish a beginning, middle, and end.β
Iβm a sucker for rule-breaking stories. Not only did this one appear in something that may or may not have been a magazine, let alone one that may or may not have qualified for The Best American Short Stories. Not only was it originally written as the text that would accompany a multi-screen video installation about science, technology, humans and non-humans. It also combines first and third person point of view, that of PARROTS.
Often we hesitate at something that is truly new. Often we question whether itβs good or bad. When I first read some of my favorite short stories, I wasnβt sure whether they were terrible or utterly brilliant.
To me, Chiangβs story is a prayer, a poem, a howl, and the most distilled and beautiful form of anticipatory grief Iβd witnessed for an at-risk planet. I told Junot this, and we both sighed with relief and agreed to include it in the book. This three-page story has stuck with me more than most others that Iβve read in my eighteen years on this job.
βTen Year Affair,β Erin Somers (full text here)
We need more humor in our short fiction. Motherhood grafted onto the multiverse? Sure, why not? Especially when the story includes lines like, βTheir generation did not take off its clothes, did not put its keys in a bowl by the front door. Sex between men and women had become taboo in their generation, where everyone was striving, not incorrectly, to be an equal. Even the word βaffairβ had the ring of obsolescence, like a cigarette or an ad man or a chaise longue.β
Rom com meets speculative fiction meets whip-smart psychological drama in this story that upends all kinds of traditions and made me fall in love with its characters. At its heart lies a human sense of longing and curiosity that I found so lovely.
βCamp Emeline,β Taryn Bowe
This story gutted me. Disabled peopleβand childrenβare too often written without depth or enough interest. They are too often plot devices instead of living and breathing people.
βCamp Emelineβ shows that the disabled and those who love them can be funny, mean, selfish, desirous. This story made me gasp more than once. It has an exquisite empathy for its characters. It does not let them off the hook. It merely presents their humanity in all its complicated, sad, ecstatic longing. I finished the last sentence a different person.
βDorchester,β Steven Duong (full text here)
Hereβs a sneak peek of this yearβs Best American Short Stories. Duongβs story was the first to make me want to stand up and cheer. This one takes a whole new look at racism and how it can play out in the bedroom. Every sentence felt true and surprising and strange and right to me.
The best stories locate the land between disparate places and find something utterly new and true there. In this and the other stories mentioned, these new places are science and technology (animals and humans); motherhood and freedom; disability and wild abandon; and in βDorchester,β racism and desire. Duongβs writing about powerlessness ends up creating a new kind of power, that of articulation, and the laying out of vulnerability, and the ability to find the absurd within the cement of earnestness. Lauren Groff was the guest editor this year, and when I sent her this one, she cheered as well, and chose it as her first βyesβ of the year.
βMall of America,β Suzanne Wang
Another sneak peek of the yearβs volume, and this one comes from a first timer! This is Suzanne Wangβs first published story. Reading this, one would think I like stories that incorporate race and technology and empathy, and one would be correct.
This story made me feel compassion and dare I say love for a Dance Dance Revolution machine. It brought me to a mall, a place not known for caretaking and listening, and showed me that even in a bastion of commercialism, even with a protagonist that is driven by AI, one can find the best of humanity.
If all of the above stories have some kind of indirect message, itβs this: βTake care of each other. Take care of the earth. Tend to the vulnerable in all its forms.β I canβt think of a better message for this moment.
Heidiβs Instagram Favorites: High-Fashion Dogs
Iβm also a shameless fan of reels of dogs, especially chihuahuas (as I have one) dressed in anything high fashion. While I do not dress my dog like a depressed Parisian poet, I applaud anyone who does.
Heidiβs Favorite Emoji: π₯³
I use it often and often ironically. It makes me smile every time. How could a small yellow face in a party hat and a blower (noisemaker? party horn?) do anything but? We all need more party hats in our lives.
Heidi PitlorΒ has worked in publishing for three decades. Since 2007, she has been the series editor ofΒ The Best American Short Stories. She is also the editorial director of the literary studio,Β Plympton,Β and the director of Heidi Pitlor Editorial, a freelance editorial firm.Β Heidi is the author of the novelsΒ The Birthdays,Β The Daylight Marriage, which was optioned for film, andΒ Impersonation. Her writing has been published inΒ The New York Times,Β The Boston Globe,Β Lit Hub,Β Ploughshares, and elsewhere.Β She lives outside Boston.
She also runs the wonderful Substack page Wordness which you can find here. Be sure to subscribe to her newsletter and read all of her workβweβre certain that youβll love it.
Touring Bookbinding
The academy is located in the Old Stone Building right in historic Telluride, which has been renovated into a 1,400-square foot book binding studio and lounge that students can access 24 hours a day (!). And they have drawers and drawers of beautiful paper for books.
Another plus, the academy helps students find (relatively) affordable housing (for Telluride) during their stays, since they have arrangements with locals who love their mission.
If youβve been inspired as much as Writing Atlas have been by the bookbinding craft videos on Tiktok and YouTube videos (though our little bookworm hearts always jump at the cover rips) β maybe a trip to Telluride is in the cards for you?
Emoji Connections πͺ’ and Proposals π
This week, Writing Atlas cell phones blew up because of the entirely emoji version of of the New York Times Connections game. We absolutely HAD to see it. This is in large part because there is an overlap between people who work on Writing Atlas and people who help bring emojis into the world, including πͺ and π₯¬, which were on the puzzle.
Sometimes a hard set of Connections can really cause an outburst on TikTok, and the puzzles for the last two weeks or so have definitely thrown a few curveballs that have made millions lose their minds. This one, however, just takes the π°! As one TikTok commenter put: βI guessed everything on vibes today.β Of course, our emoji experts on the Writing Atlas team were unfazed.
And you too could be someone who brings about a new emoji into the world! Emoji proposal submissions to the Unicode Consortium opened this week for the first time since 2022. Who knows? You might just be the one responsible for an emoji on a New York Times Connections or a crowd favorite like π, π, or π€.
That marks the end of our jam-packed journey this week. Whether sunny Los Angeles βοΈ or snowy Telluride π¨οΈ, weβre happy to take you along for the ride, Writing Atlas family!
If you ever would like to curate short stories, share quirky cool literary places, or celebrate cool crafty things, let us know by leaving a comment or reaching out to us. And as always, keep watching for updates to our Writing Atlas homepage as we keep rolling out exciting changes
Sincerely,
Your Writing Atlas team