Funds for Bookworm are provided in part by Lannin Foundation.

You are a human animal.

You are a very special breed,

or you are the only animal, who can think, who can reason, who can read.

From KCRW Santa Monica, this is Bookworm, and I'm Michael Silverblatt.

Today I'm very lucky to have as my guest, Annie Prue,

whose new book of short stories, fine just the way it is,

has recently been published by Scribner.

It is the third volume in a series of Wyoming stories that began with Coast Range.

The second volume was Bad Dirt, and this is fine just the way it is.

And I'm curious, where does that title come from?

Mostly it's because when you make a protest about the way things are done in Wyoming,

and people will often shrug and say, well, it's fine just the way it is.

It works okay, and don't bother with it, don't touch it, leave it alone, it's fine.

And it's just common talk, so it seems like the right title for this last and the series of Wyoming stories.

Now, Annie Pru is, of course, the author, among other things, of the shipping news, postcards, accordion crimes.

Her story, Brokeback Mountain is one of my favorite stories in the world,

and it shook up the New Yorker when it appeared,

people shaking their heads to be sure if they'd just registered what they'd just read.

And these books, I like to say that they're not like conventional collections of short stories.

I don't know what word to give them, but I remember there was once something called a whizbang, Captain Billy's Whizbang, and it was a collections of, you know,

stories, true life dramas, jokes, and cartoons.

...