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This is Rebecca Loew or Rebecca Loewa if you listen to suboptimal radio and you are listening to Men in Blazers on the NBC Sports Network.

Welcome to a Men in Blazers pod special.

Oh, with an author who is one of my favourites. Even though he self describes as semi-obscure and a writer's writer, I've actually lapt up everything that he's ever crafted,

is work truly stirs me, the emotions he minds, often of human failure, loneliness, honour and doom, the precision with which he writes,

the New York Times proclaim his stories come bearing an unimpeachable detail to ensure they never sink into the mush of a half-baked world.

And above all, the vast range of the subject matter he explores in his collections, the latest of which, the world to come,

a magnificent pallet of short stories about human beings grappling to succeed and ultimately failing, most often nobly.

One minute, you remit naive 19th century English explorers freezing to death three years into a doomed attempt to reach the North Pole to metaphor for every ever-ton football club season.

The next, next you're alongside a 1600 BC Minoan, poised to have your entire civilization wiped out by an oncoming tsunami.

But my guest treats all with a death touch akin to a constant maestro who never hits a flat note.

The experience of reading his books is to feel alive and to take nothing for granted. I really feel like his work should be compulsory reading for everyone on their 21st birthday.

So we welcome to the pod, the order of seven novels including the Magnificent Book of Aaron, and really an orgy, is at the right collective noun for short stories and all the books.

The orgy of short story collections, five I think. He's a gentleman's gentleman, welcome to the pod. Mr. Jim Shepard.

Thank you, I think we can stop right there, don't you? It's been a pleasure having you on Jim, thank you so much.

Jim, I want to start with the confession. I hated short stories until I found your work as a reader. I've become so invested in building the world the writers constructing.

And so to read short stories and to have to build them up and then knock them down and then move on repeatedly, it always felt incredibly unsatisfying.

I felt like the experience was a movie with off-kilter jump cuts. But you've drawn me to it because each of your stories is consistent, it's quality storytelling.

But I've got to ask you, why did you prefer about the quick release doodle of the short story form?

I think I'm more attracted to the notion of getting in and hitting the ground running. And I actually started by writing novels.

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