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 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, I'm Michael Sopherblatt, and this is Bookworm.

For the last couple of months, summer, we've witnessed the arrival of new fiction issues

of major magazines, among them the New Yorker and the Paris Review, and articles on how

all fiction is terrible in places like the Atlantic and Harbors.

But the great delight of the summer was that it provided more than its usual share of short story

collections from first writers. I thought it would be a very interesting thing to bring several

writers whose at least first collection from a major

press, was published during the summer. Those are Dan Sean, whose book Among the Missing

has recently been published by Ballantyne. Adrian Sharp, whose collection of stories, White Swan Black Swan, a First

Collection, has been published by Random House, and Marissa Silver, whose Book of Stories, Babe

in Paradise, was published recently by Norton. Dan is the only one who has a previous book. It was fitting ends, and it came out

originally from the tri-qu quarterly press. But all of these writers emerge from various small

presses and literary magazines, and they've all, to my practiced I, been to writing workshops. They've all been writing many, many short

stories before these finally emerged and came into books. So I wanted to begin by asking,

was the short story your preferred form. Adrienne?

Always has been half out of necessity and half out of desire.

Having two kids

...