Guest host Cynthia Nixon presents stories by two American masters that feature improbable relationships.

Raymond Carver’s “Cathedral” is an unexpectedly humorous work by this American master of spare realism.  In James Naughton’s engaging reading, we meet a bewildered husband who is bemused, and a little nervous, when his wife’s blind friend comes to spend the night.  But in the course of a long evening, he forges his own bond with the man.  “Cathedral” is the title story of one of Carver’s collections of short fiction.  The others are Will You Please Be Quiet, Please?, Furious Seasons, What We Talk About When We Talk About Love, and Elephant.  The influential Carver shaped the styles, and nurtured the careers, of many contemporary writers.

Only the incorrigible T.C. Boyle could imagine taking the 18^th-century mistress of romantic comic fiction, Jane Austen, on a date.  And not just any date, but one involving a naughty film, a disco, and a duel.  SELECTED SHORTS’ late founder and host Isaiah Sheffer loved Boyle’s outrageous conceits, and never passed up an opportunity to read one of his stories.  We hear him in “Dating Jane Austen.”

The prodigious Boyle is the author of over a dozen novels—most recently San Miguel—and his short story output—many treasured on this series—tops 100.

“Cathedral,” by Raymond Carver, performed by James Naughton

“I Dated Jane Austen,” by TC Boyle, performed by Isaiah Sheffer

The SELECTED SHORTS theme is David Peterson's “That's the Deal,” performed by the Deardorf/Peterson Group.

For additional works featured on SELECTED SHORTS, please visit http://www.symphonyspace.org/genres/seriesPage.php?seriesId=71&genreId=4

We’re interested in your response to these programs.  Please comment on this site or visit www.selectedshorts.org

And for more thoughts on the stories in SHORTS, check out literary commentator Hannah Tinti’s site at http://hannahtinti.com

Guest host Neil Gaiman introduces two American classics. 

The late science fiction writer Ray Bradbury’s story  “The Veldt” was first published in 1950 in The Saturday Evening Post with the title “The World the Children Made,” which is a good description of what goes on in this eerie tale.  It imagines the “model home” of the future, including a programmable nursery that becomes the site of a power struggle.  Gaiman says that Bradbury’s tale raises complex questions: “Are our children our own?”, and “What does technology do to them?”  The deceptively low-key read is by political satirist and television personality Stephen Colbert.

Next, classic humor from James Thurber, who drew on the zesty vocabulary of sports commentator Red Barber to fashion this tale of a mild-mannered office manager plotting revenge on a pushy efficiency expert.  Leonard Nimoy is often heard on SELECTED SHORTS reading sober stories by writers such as Raymond Carver and Evelyn Waugh.  But he gives an extravagantly funny performance in James Thurber’s “The Catbird Seat.

“The Veldt,” by Ray Bradbury, performed by Stephen Colbert

“The Catbird Seat,” by James Thurber, performed by Leonard Nimoy

The SELECTED SHORTS theme is David Peterson's “That's the Deal,” performed by the Deardorf/Peterson Group.

For additional works featured on SELECTED SHORTS, please visit http://www.symphonyspace.org/genres/seriesPage.php?seriesId=71&genreId=4

We’re interested in your response to these programs.  Please comment on this site or visit www.selectedshorts.org

And for more thoughts on the stories in SHORTS, check out literary commentator Hannah Tinti’s site at http://hannahtinti.com

Guest host Neil Gaiman introduces stories with surprises.

Ordinary events yield unexpected results in the four tales on this program.  First, Jane Yolen’s “The Baby Sitter” includes some familiar details: a creepy Victorian house, mysterious footsteps, and a teenage narrator in peril.  But it turns out to be a ghost story with a twist.  The story is from Yolen’s collection of modern myths, Twelve Impossible Things Before Breakfast.  She is a prolific young adult and fantasy writer, but this story has wit to spare for all ages.  The reader is SELECTED SHORTS’ late host and creator Isaiah Sheffer.

James Thurber’s classic character doesn’t just expect the unexpected, he craves it.  In “The Secret Life of Walter Mitty” Thurber introduces a milquetoast with attitude, who escapes from a drab life into a series of adventurous fantasies.  Gaiman and SHORTS literary commentator Hannah Tinti discuss Thurber’s lasting appeal. 

The third story on this program is Ray Bradbury’s eerie “The Pedestrian.” It’s based on an actual episode in Bradbury’s life, when an innocent stroll down Wilshire Boulevard in Los Angeles attracted the attention of police.  Though published in 1951, it anticipates our media-dominated lives, and may have been the starting point for one of Bradbury’s most celebrated dystopian fantasies, Fahrenheit 451.  Reader Jamey Sheridan starred in the Stephen King mini-series “The Stand” and has a recurring role on “Homeland.”

Finally, we return to James Thurber is a more gently humorous vein.  “The Wood Duck” is part memoir, part story, and chronicles the author’s chance encounter with a duck with nine lives.  SHORTS regular Malachy McCourt infuses this quirky tale with bemused indignation.

“The Baby-Sitter,” by Jane Yolen, performed by Isaiah Sheffer  

“The Secret Life of Walter Mitty,” by James Thurber, performed by Dick Cavett

“The Pedestrian,” by Ray Bradbury, performed by Jamey Sheridan  

“The Wood Duck,” by James Thurber, performed by Malachy McCourt

The SELECTED SHORTS theme is David Peterson's “That's the Deal,” performed by the Deardorf/Peterson Group.

For additional works featured on SELECTED SHORTS, please visit http://www.symphonyspace.org/genres/seriesPage.php?seriesId=71&genreId=4

We’re interested in your response to these programs.  Please comment on this site or visit www.selectedshorts.org

And for more thoughts on the stories in SHORTS, check out literary commentator Hannah Tinti’s site at http://hannahtinti.com

Guest host Cynthia Nixon introduces two tales of avarice and pretension among the well-heeled and well-born.

High society and high comedy unite these tales by Tom Wolfe and Edith Wharton.  First up, a selection from Tom Wolfe’s classic 1980s Wall Street satire, The Bonfire of the Vanities.  The 1987 novel was conceived by Wolfe as a panoramic look at New York City during a period of oblivious affluence, and began as a serial work in “Rolling Stone.”  In the excerpt heard here, wealthy bond trader and self-proclaimed “Master of the Universe” Sherman McCoy sets off for work. 

The reader is Danny Burstein, who won the 2012 Drama Desk Award and Outer Critics Circle Award for Outstanding Actor in a Musical, for his performance in the Broadway revival of “Follies” and whose film and television work includes “Transamerica,” “Deception” and the recurring role of Lolly Steinman in "Boardwalk Empire".

Pulitzer Prize-winning American author Edith Wharton wrote elegantly and devilishly about her subjects—rich Americans living at home and abroad.  In “Xingu,” a fabulous shaggy dog tale, she skewers the upper-crust “ladies who lunch,” whom she describes scathingly as “pursuing Culture in bands, as if it were dangerous to meet alone.”

“Xingu” is performed by the Emmy Award-winning television actor and SHORTS regular Christina Pickles, who always gets the funny stories.

“Bonfire of the Vanities,” excerpt by Tom Wolfe, performed by Danny Burstein

“Xingu,” Edith Wharton, performed by Christina Pickles

The SELECTED SHORTS theme is David Peterson's “That's the Deal,” performed by the Deardorf/Peterson Group.

For additional works featured on SELECTED SHORTS, please visit www.selectedshorts.org

We’re interested in your response to these programs.  Please comment on this site or visit www.selectedshorts.org

And for more thoughts on the stories in SHORTS, check out literary commentator Hannah Tinti’s site at http://hannahtinti.com

Guest host David Sedaris presents a program of stories by the legendary wit, Dorothy Parker

Parker was the reigning Queen of the Algonquin Roundtable, where writers for the smart magazines of the 1920s and 1930s met for lunch and to skewer each other.  Her wickedly funny stories for The New Yorker among other outlets showed an uncanny ear for the peevish, pretentious, and self-deluded.  Guest host David Sedaris says that in many of her stories, if you look past the laughs, you will see the sadness.

The late John Updike clearly agreed—he chose our first story, “Here We Are,” for the volume of The Best American Short Stories of the Century that he edited.  In it, a honeymooning couple finally starts to get to know one another other—with unexpected results.  The reader is Jane Alexander, an award-winning stage and film actor who also ran the National Endowment for the Arts for a few years.

Dorothy Parker came of age as a woman and a writer in the speakeasy era; there’s a hectic, raffish quality to some of her work, including the hilarious “Here We Are.”  Its setting is a cave-like bar in which a jealous woman delivers a non-stop monologue to an unseen beau, fuelled by an unending stream of highballs.  Reader Dana Ivey makes every slur count.

The heroine of our last tale, “The Waltz,” also delivers a monologue, but it’s interior.  She’s at a dance, stuck with a partner who dances like a buffalo and kicks her in the shins.  She’s simpering on the outside, but seething on the inside.  The reader is indy star Parker Posey.

“Here We Are,” by Dorothy Parker, performed by Jane Alexander

“Just a Little One,” by Dorothy Parker, performed  by Dana Ivey

“The Waltz,” by Dorothy Parker, performed by Parker Posey

The SELECTED SHORTS theme is David Peterson's “That's the Deal,” performed by the Deardorf/Peterson Group.

For additional works featured on SELECTED SHORTS, please visit http://www.symphonyspace.org/genres/seriesPage.php?seriesId=71&genreId=4

We’re interested in your response to these programs.  Please comment on this site or visit www.selectedshorts.org

And for more thoughts on the stories in SHORTS, check out literary commentator Hannah Tinti’s site at http://hannahtinti.com

“Something familiar, something peculiar, something for everyone…” in this case, a celebration of the great American humorist James Thurber by guest host comedian Wyatt Cenac.

“If you met one of his characters at a bus station, or an airport, you’d get along with them,” says Wyatt Cenac of the creations of one of his favorite writers, James Thurber.  “That everyman thing—it’s pretty cool.”  And to launch our new season of SELECTED SHORTS, we asked Wyatt to present some choice readings of Thurber favorites, including some of his own.

Everyone who knows him has a favorite Thurber—the ultimate escape fantasy “The Secret Life of Walter Mitty,” or one of his hilarious cartoons featuring intimidating wives and bemused husbands, or any one of his big goofy dogs.  (Thurber loved dogs and had many canine friends throughout his life.  He is pictured at left with Standard Poodle bitch "Poodle.")

Thurber was a comic genius in a multitude of genres, with an essential humanity that made even his sharpest works endearing.  He was born in Columbus, Ohio in 1894, and died in 1961.  Like many writers of his era, he started as a newspaperman, but his career really began to take shape when he was hired to work at The New Yorker magazine by its legendary founding editor Harold Ross.  Over the course of a long and successful life, he produced stories, plays, cartoons, and memoirs, one of which, My World and Welcome To It, became the basis for a television series.

For this program, we’ve picked a collection of favorite reads:  our late friend David Rakoff portrays Thurber himself, recalling a hair-raising escapade in the company of his Russian émigré gardener: “A Ride with Olympy.”  The distinguished actor Eli Wallach offers another personal anecdote—Thurber’s first experience with live radio—in “How to Relax While Broadcasting” (NOT).  Our last host and founder Isaiah Sheffer puts his unique stamp on a witty short about a well-bred couple willing to risk ridicule—and possible arrest—to settle a bet.

Our guest host Wyatt Cenac is a former writer and editor for “King of the Hill,” and worked for several seasons as a writer and correspondent on “The Daily Show with Jon Stewart”; he starred in his own comedy special, “Comedy Person,” and has appeared, or been heard, in a variety of other roles on television and in film.  He recently returned from Atlantic Ocean Comedy and Music Festival, a comedy cruise organized by Jesse Thorn.

Cenac says that as a child he had “an overactive imagination” that would kick in at inappropriate moments (in school, in church), and it was a revelation to him to read “The Secret Life of Walter Mitty,” where he encountered a grown-up with the same problem.  Wyatt reads this Thurber masterpiece about a henpecked husband with a rich fantasy life at the end of the program, as well as Thurber’s witty pastiche of the classic English detective novel, “Macbeth Murder Mystery.”

More Thurber:

Information about James Thurber is available from Thurber House.

No celebration of Thurber would be complete without some of his delightful cartoons.  Please enjoy them in the slide show below.

And for a special “value-added” Thurber event, use the video link to hear Neil Gaiman's reading of Thurber’s “The Thirteen Clocks” (Animation created by Team Detroit for Barnes & Noble.com; courtesy of Barnes & Noble.)

We are grateful to the Thurber family and estate, and the Barbara Hogenson Agency, for their help in providing and granting permission for the use of these materials.

“A Ride with Olympy,” by James Thurber, performed by David Rakoff 

“Macbeth Murder Mystery,” by James Thurber, performed by Wyatt Cenac

“The Topaz Cufflinks Mystery,” by James Thurber, performed by Isaiah Sheffer

“How to Relax While Broadcasting,” by James Thurber, performed by Eli Wallach

“The Secret Life of Walter Mitty,” by James Thurber, performed by Wyatt Cenac

The SELECTED SHORTS theme is David Peterson's “That's the Deal,” performed by the Deardorf/Peterson Group.

For additional works featured on SELECTED SHORTS, please visit http://www.symphonyspace.org/genres/seriesPage.php?seriesId=71&genreId=4

We’re interested in your response to these programs.  Please comment on this site or visit www.selectedshorts.org

And for more thoughts on the stories in SHORTS, check out literary commentator Hannah Tinti’s site at http://hannahtinti.com

Drastic solutions, last chances, and it’s too late, in three stories hosted by Wyatt Cenac.

This program features three very different stories about drastic solutions and last chances.  Master fantasist Steven Millhauser imagines the world covered by a gigantic plastic sphere in “The Dome,” read by Alec Baldwin. Millhauser is a Pulitzer Prize winner, and his novels include Edwin Mullhouse, Portrait of a Romantic, and Martin Dressler.  His short story collections include Dangerous Laughter: Thirteen Stories and We Others: New and Selected Stories.  Scholar Robert Scholes labeled Millhauser’s type of work "fabulation"; see for yourself.

I’ve been interested in disaster for long time,” says Jim Shepard of his shattering miniature of a tale, “Cretan Love Song,” which slices through time to 1600 B.C., and the moment when the volcanic island of Thera erupts and eclipses Minoan civilization, changing the landscape of history forever.  Shepard researched the story for months, but comments laconically, “when you start with the greatest disaster in history, you can’t write a really long story!” 

Shepard is the author of ten books, the most recent being his collection, You Think That’s Bad.   He teaches creative writing at Williams College in Williamstown, Massachusetts.  Joe Morton gives “Cretan Love Song” a powerful rendering.

Author Nicholson Baker’s eclectic oeuvre includes fiction and non-fiction books that range from Double Fold: Libraries and the Assault on Paper to House of Holes: A Book of Raunch.  In his eerily comic “Subsoil,” read by Thomas Gibson, Mr. Potato Head is not your friend.

“The Dome,” by Steven Millhauser, performed by Alec Baldwin

“Cretan Love Song,” byJim Shepard, performed by Joe Morton

“Subsoil,” by Nicholson Baker, performed by Thomas Gibson

The SELECTED SHORTS theme is David Peterson's “That's the Deal,” performed by the Deardorf/Peterson Group.

For additional works featured on SELECTED SHORTS, please visit http://www.symphonyspace.org/genres/seriesPage.php?seriesId=71&genreId=4

We’re interested in your response to these programs.  Please comment on this site or visit www.selectedshorts.org

 And for more thoughts on the stories in SHORTS, check out literary commentator Hannah Tinti’s site at http://hannahtinti.com

Guest host Robert Sean Leonard presents a program of stories about finding love in unexpected places.

First, from the fertile brain of Simon Rich, cave boy meets cave girl in “I Love Girl,” in which Cro-Magnon suitors via for the same woman.  The reader is Michael Ian Black, a writer, comedian, and actor who has created and starred in many television series, including “Stella” and “The State.”

Next, if Jonah had started a commune, it might have the same strange quality as the world of “When We Lived Together in the Belly of a Whale, Some Nights Were Perfect,” by Mara McCormick Sternberg, which was the winning entry in SELECTED SHORTS’ 2013 Stella Kupferberg Memorial Short Story Prize competition.  It is read by Tony Award-winning actor and SELECTED SHORTS’ live performance host BD Wong.

Our last work on this program of stories about finding love when and where you least expect it is N.M Kelby’s “Jubilation, Florida.” These lovers are gently used, a little cynical, and married to other people, but at least for one night, they seem to be destined for each other.  Amy Ryan performed “Jubilation, Florida” at the Boston University Theatre in Boston.   The story was original published in One Story magazine.   Kelby (Nicole Mary Kelby) is also the author of the novels In the Company of Angels and White Truffles in Winter.

“I Love Girl,” by Simon Rich; performed by Michael Ian Black 

“Then We Lived Together In the Belly of a Whale, Some Nights Were Perfect,” by Mara Sternberg, performed by BD Wong 

“Jubilation, Florida,” by N.M Kelby, performed by Amy Ryan

The SELECTED SHORTS theme is David Peterson's “That's the Deal,” performed by the Deardorf/Peterson Group.

For additional works featured on SELECTED SHORTS, please visit http://www.symphonyspace.org/genres/seriesPage.php?seriesId=71&genreId=4

We’re interested in your response to these programs.  Please comment on this site or visit www.selectedshorts.org

And for more thoughts on the stories in SHORTS, check out literary commentator Hannah Tinti’s site at http://hannahtinti.com

On October 10^th it was announced that the 2013 Nobel Prize for Literature would go to 82-year-old Canadian writer Alice Munro.

The choice seems a heartening endorsement of the importance of her delicate and surprisingly powerful examinations of the ordinary—what Michiko Kakutani, writing in the "New York Times," calls “the music of domestic life.”

In a career spanning nearly fifty years, Munro’s many stories focus on the lives of women and their families, and the quietly momentous choices they make every day.  Memory plays a strong role in her work, and her characters are often storytellers themselves, or mavericks.

In a way, Munro’s Nobel is an affirmation of writing itself, the way it can make any life or event luminous if enough rigorous attention is paid to it.

In honor of Munro, whose works have been featured over the years on SELECTED SHORTS, we offer this talk with fellow Canadian Robert MacNeil.  The conversation took place as part of the Thalia Bookclub series at Symphony Space, and was subsequently broadcast on WNYC.

For additional works featured on SELECTED SHORTS, please visit http://www.symphonyspace.org/genres/seriesPage.php?seriesId=71&genreId=4

We’re interested in your response to these programs.  Please comment on this site or visit www.selectedshorts.org

And for more thoughts on the stories in SHORTS, check out literary commentator Hannah Tinti’s site at http://hannahtinti.com

Social revolution and personal revelation, in three stories presented by Robert Sean Leonard.

Our first two stories date from the turbulent 1960s, when a generation of African-Americans began to demand their rights, on the streets, and in print.   In “Homegirls on St. Nicholas Avenue,” read by Marsha Stephanie Blake, the writer Sonia Sanchez remembers when Malcolm X changed her life.  Sanchez is a poet, teacher, and activist whose works include I've Been a Woman: New and Selected Poems, Wounded in the House of a Friend, Does Your House have Lions?, and Like the Singing Coming Off of Drums.  Marsha Stephanie Blake has appeared on Broadway in “The Merchant of Venice” and “Joe Turner’s Come and Gone.” Her television work includes the shows “Elementary” and “Law and Order: SVU.” 

Henry Dumas’ “Strike and Fade,” brings back the volatile Harlem of the 1960s.  Its first-person jive narrative has the energy and impatience of the youth whose lives and hopes were being threatened by authority, and who were prepared to fight back.  Dumas died tragically young at 33, and his work was posthumously published through the efforts of his friend and collaborator Eugene Redmond, and of Quincy Troupe and Toni Morrison.  His works include the poetry collection Play Ebony, Play Ivory, and an anthology of short stories, Ark of Bones.

“Strike and Fade,” was performed by Francois Battiste, whose stage performances include “Detroit ’67, “The Merchant of Venice” and “The Good Negro” at the Public Theater, for which he received the Obie Award.

In our final story, a mild-mannered teacher and his activist mother are brought to life by “Nurse Jackie” star Edie Falco, in Charles Baxter’s “Fenstad’s Mother.”  In a delicate study of two contrasting characters, he strives to be, while she simply is.  SHORTS literary commentator Hannah Tinti notes that Baxter is a writers’ writer, and his book Burning Down the House a go-to source for ways to “make your story come to life.”  Baxter’s other works include the story collections Relative Stranger, Believers, and Gryphon: New and Selected Stories.  He was a 2011 recipient of the Rae Award for the Short Story, among other honors.

SHORTS literary commentator Tinti and host Leonard briefly discuss all three stories on this program.

“Homegirls on St. Nicholas Avenue,” by Sonia Sanchez, performed by Marsha Stephanie Blake 

“Strike and Fade,” by Henry Dumas, performed by Francois Battiste

“Fenstad’s Mother,” by Charles Baxter; performed by Edie Falco

The SELECTED SHORTS theme is David Peterson's “That's the Deal,” performed by the Deardorf/Peterson Group.

For additional works featured on SELECTED SHORTS, please visit http://www.symphonyspace.org/genres/seriesPage.php?seriesId=71&genreId=4

We’re interested in your response to these programs.  Please comment on this site or visit www.selectedshorts.org

And for more thoughts on the stories in SHORTS, check out literary commentator Hannah Tinti’s site at http://hannahtinti.com

Our far-flung correspondent: literary commetator Hannah Tinti records tracks at Sound Trap Studios on Whidbey Island, WA

Guest host Wyatt Cenac presents eerie and funny tales and poems for Halloween.

We pulled a few choice works out of the vault to celebrate one of our favorite holidays.

The program begins with an hilarious mock-Gothic narrative by the Canadian author Robertson Davies.  “The Cat that Went to Trinity” pays a kind of gruesome homage to Frankenstein, and pokes a little fun at academic ivory towers as well.  Davies is best known for his series of outré trilogies—Salterton, Deptford, Cornish, and Toronto—but was also the prolific author of many plays, essays, and critical works.  In addition, he was himself an academic, and the Massey College that is burdened with Frankenstein’s cat in this story was founded by him.  During his tenure as its Master he began a tradition of telling ghost stories featuring the college at Christmas.  These were later collected in the book High Spirits, and “The Cat That Went to Trinity,” is part of this collection.  Reader Charles Keating has a lot of fun with the melodrama.

What would Halloween be without America’s own master of the macabre, Edgar Allan Poe?  We offer three favorites here—his eerie poem “The Bells,” which plays with their many meanings in our lives; the haunting song of a lost love, “Annabel Lee;” and the ultimate revenge tale, “The Cask of Amontillado.”  The poems are read by Rene Auberjonois, Fionnula Flanagan, Isaiah Sheffer, and Harris Yulin.  “The Cask of Amontillado” is performed by host Wyatt Cenac.

“The Cat that Went to Trinity,” by Robertson Davies, performed by Charles Keating

 “The Bells,” by Edgar Allan Poe, performed by Rene Auberjonois, Fionnula Flanagan, Isaiah Sheffer, and Harris Yulin

“Annabel Lee,” by Edgar Allan Poe, performed by Rene Auberjonois, Isaiah Sheffer, and Harris Yulin

“The Cask of Amontillado,” by Edgar Allen Poe, performed by Wyatt Cenac

The SELECTED SHORTS theme is David Peterson's “That's the Deal,” performed by the Deardorf/Peterson Group.

For additional works featured on SELECTED SHORTS, please visit http://www.symphonyspace.org/genres/seriesPage.php?seriesId=71&genreId=4

We’re interested in your response to these programs.  Please comment on this site or visit www.selectedshorts.org

And for more thoughts on the stories in SHORTS, check out literary commentator Hannah Tinti’s site at http://hannahtinti.com

The stories on this program, hosted by Wyatt Cenac, feature two exceptional children and a nervous parent.   

“Solomon’s Big Day,” by performance artist Toure, follows a child prodigy as he tries to paint a masterpiece and escape pretentious adults.   Toure is the host of “Hiphop Shop” and “On the Record” (on the Fuse TV channel) and co-host of “The Cycle” on MSNBC. He teaches at New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts.  His published works include The Portable Promised Land: Stories, Soul City: A Novel, and the essay collection Never Drank the Kool-Aid. 

Reader Daniel Alexander Jones is also a performance artist, and playwright.  He is the head of the playwriting program at Fordham University.

In our second story, “Lars Farf, Excessively Fearful Father and Husband,” George Saunders imagines a father who goes to extremes to protect his family—from absolutely everything, including life itself.  Among Saunders many honors are a MacArthur “Genius Grant” and inclusion in Time Magazine’s “100 Most Influential People” list.   His most recent collection is Tenth of December.  “Lars Farf, Excessively Fearful Father and Husband,” is read by Tony Award-winner James Naughton.

Our final story, “Charles,” is an uncharacteristically light-hearted tale by horror maven Shirley Jackson (“The Lottery,” The Haunting of Hill House).  In it, a precocious kindergartener horrifies his parents all right, but it’s with tales of the class delinquent.  “Charles,” is read by Lois Smith, whose many film, television and theatre credits include performances in “Twister,” “True Blood,” and “The Trip to Bountiful.”

“Solomon’s Big Day,” by Toure, performed by Daniel Alexander Jones

“Lars Farf, Excessively Fearful Father and Husband,” by George Saunders, performed by James Naughton

“Charles,” by Shirley Jackson, performed by Lois Smith

The SELECTED SHORTS theme is David Peterson's “That's the Deal,” performed by the Deardorf/Peterson Group.

For additional works featured on SELECTED SHORTS, please visit http://www.symphonyspace.org/genres/seriesPage.php?seriesId=71&genreId=4

We’re interested in your response to these programs.  Please comment on this site or visit www.selectedshorts.org

And for more thoughts on the stories in SHORTS, check out literary commentator Hannah Tinti’s site at http://hannahtinti.com

A long marriage and the Tweedledum and Tweedledee of the nuclear age in stories hosted by Wyatt Cenac.

Native American author Sherman Alexie offers a portrait of a marriage in “Do You Know Where I Am?”  He comments that one of his intentions in this story was to look at educated, upper-middle class Native Americans, a group not often written about.  He was also interested in the texture of a life-long relationship.  The story is read by Keir Dullea, one of several actors—John Lithgow and BD Wong are others—who have really partnered with Alexie’s tough and tender stories.

In Alexie’s story, the characters are husband and wife.  But in Donald Barthleme’s “Game” we’re waiting out the Cold War, in an undisclosed bunker, with two paranoid guys who could make everything go “Boom.” 

Reader David Strathairn has played such historical figures as Martin Heidegger and Edward R. Murrow.  Thank God the close-to-the edge characters in “Game” are figments of this late New Yorker writer’s quirky imagination.  Barthleme published numerous volumes of short stories, four novels, and a children’s book for which he won the National Book Award.  He was also the 1988 recipient of the Rea Award for the Short Story.

“Do You Know Where I Am?,” by Sherman Alexie, performed by Keir Dullea

“Game,” by Donald Barthelme, performed by David Strathairn

The SELECTED SHORTS theme is David Peterson's “That's the Deal,” performed by the Deardorf/Peterson Group.

For additional works featured on SELECTED SHORTS, please visit http://www.symphonyspace.org/genres/seriesPage.php?seriesId=71&genreId=4

We’re interested in your response to these programs.  Please comment on this site or visit www.selectedshorts.org

 And for more thoughts on the stories in SHORTS, check out literary commentator Hannah Tinti’s site at http://hannahtinti.com

SELECTED SHORTS’ late host and creator Isaiah Sheffer died last November, and we’re marking the occasion with a repeat of this special program celebrating his work. It’s hosted by writer Colum McCann.

Isaiah Sheffer presided over SELECTED SHORTS for nearly thirty years, curating a wide range of classic and contemporary fiction from all over the world.  “Stories were our glue, Isaiah knew that,” says McCann.  “They had to be good enough to break your heart, and keen enough to mend it.  They had to be intimate enough to be local, and adventurous enough to go everywhere.”

Sheffer went everywhere with our first story, performing T.C. Boyle’s parody of old-time Lassie movies, “Heart of a Champion,” for audiences all over the country and on the air.  As a performer, he had a particular fondness for stories that pushed reality right over the edge into something more, and this is a perfect example.

Another favorite author was Ian Frazier, the humorist and frequent contributor to The New Yorker.  On this program we feature his delicately transgressive “Dating Your Mom,” and his mock Biblical account of a hapless suburban Dad trying to control his children’s eating habits, “Lamentations of the Father.”

Funny as he was, Sheffer could also give a nuanced read of more poignant stories, like Allan Gurganus’ “It Had Wings,” in which an elderly widow finds an injured angel in her garden.

These were just some of the dozens of stories that Isaiah Sheffer brought to life over the years.  “Death takes away a lot,” says McCann, “but it can never take away our stories.  We miss him already, but he’s still here, in his stories, in his wisdom, and here in the way he connected us together.”   Among those Isaiah connected were the many writers and actors who became part of the SELECTED SHORTS family.  We hear brief tributes from Roy Blount, Jr., T.C. Boyle, Jane Curtin, and Sonia Manzano.

“Heart of a Champion,” by T.C. Boyle

“Dating Your Mom,” by Ian Frazier

“Lamentations of the Father,” by Ian Frazier

“It Had Wings,” by Allan Gurganus

The SELECTED SHORTS theme is David Peterson's “That's the Deal,” performed by the Deardorf/Peterson Group.

http://www.symphonyspace.org/genres/seriesPage.php?seriesId=71&genreId=4

We’re interested in your response to these programs.  Please comment on this site or visit www.selectedshorts.org

And for more thoughts on the stories in SHORTS, check out literary commentator Hannah Tinti’s site at http://hannahtinti.com

A real whopper, a weird dream, and tweeting Jane Austen, in stories hosted by Wyatt Cenac.

A character playing hooky from work gets trapped by “The Lie,” in this story by T.C. Boyle read by Stephen Colbert.  T.C. Boyle’s novels include World's End, The Road toWellville, The Women, and San Miguel.  His short-story collections include Tooth and Claw, After the Plague, If the River Was Whiskey, and most recently, T.C. Boyle Stories II. 

In a reprise of one of our favorite tales, the author Thomas Meehan has a great party in “Yma Dream,” until it turns into a nightmare.  The story’s “joke” is wonderfully sonic, so we won’t give it away here.  Christine Baranski performs this almost-musical farce with gusto.  Meehan has contributed regularly to The New Yorker, where “Yma Dream” first appeared, and is also an award-winning librettist for operas and musicals.

Guest host Wyatt Cenac finishes up with “Pride and Prejudice.”  But don’t turn that dial.  This version happens in a quick twenty tweets.  It’s from Alexander Aciman’s and Emmett Rensin’s Twitterature, and Aciman talked with Cenac about this handy anthology of all the world’s great lit in all the time you have available in the digital age.  Listen to that talk, and a special read by Aciman of Twitterature's somewhat naughty interpretations of Moby Dick and Hamlet, here:

“The Lie,” by T.C. Boyle, performed by Stephen Colbert

“Yma Dream,” by Thomas Meehan, performed by Christine Baranski

“Pride and Prejudice,” from Twitterature, performed by Wyatt Cenac

The SELECTED SHORTS theme is David Peterson's “That's the Deal,” performed by the Deardorf/Peterson Group.

For additional works featured on SELECTED SHORTS, please visit http://www.symphonyspace.org/genres/seriesPage.php?seriesId=71&genreId=4

We’re interested in your response to these programs.  Please comment on this site or visit www.selectedshorts.org

And for more thoughts on the stories in SHORTS, check out literary commentator Hannah Tinti’s site at http://hannahtinti.com

We celebrate the American master John Updike with two stories hosted by Jane Kaczmarek.

Updike uncovered the extraordinary in the ordinary in stories written over fifty years.

His characters weren’t glamorous, or heroic. They were usually the kind of moderately affluent suburbanite he was himself. But his writing, often for The New Yorker, was poignant, vivid, and detailed. The people in his stories—their struggles to make sense of their lives, their marriages, and their children—seemed to speak to all of us. 

On this program, we feature two stories that were part of an evening at Symphony Space celebrating Updike, as well as an excerpt from the foreword quoted here, read by the playwright Tony Kushner. The occasion was the publication of Library of America’s John Updike: The Collected Stories.

In our first story, “Unstuck” a minor mishap strengthens a young couple’s marriage. It was first published in The New Yorker in 1962. Guest host Jane Kaczmarek is the reader. She is best known for her role as the extravagantly comic Mom, Lois, on “Malcolm in the Middle.” Other television work includes appearances on “Wilfred,” “Whitney,” “The Middle,” and “Law & Order: Special Victims Unit.” She can also be heard on episodes of “The Simpsons” and “Jake and the Neverland Pirates.” Films include “Pleasantville,” and “Falling in Love,” and she’s appeared on stage in “Lost In Yonkers” and “Raised in Captivity,” among other works.

It’s a measure of Updike’s long career that the two stories on this show were published exactly thirty years apart. Our second, “Playing with Dynamite,” ran in The New Yorker in 1992. The main character is an aging man looking back with bemusement on a long life, his memories as palpable and real as anything in the present.

The reader is two-time Oscar winner Sally Field (“Norma Rae,” “Places in the Heart”); other awards include the Emmy for her work in the television film “Sybil,” and on the series “ER” and “Brothers & Sisters.” She makes her SELECTED SHORTS debut with this reading.

Over the course of his long career Updike won almost every award there is for fiction, including the National Book Award, the Pulitzer and the Rea Award for the Short Story. On the occasion of the 20^th anniversary of this award, Updike spoke briefly at Symphony Space. Listen to those words here:

“Unstuck,” by John Updike, performed by Jane Kaczmarek

“Playing with Dynamite,” by John Updike, performed by Sally Field.

The SELECTED SHORTS theme is David Peterson's “That's the Deal,” performed by the Deardorf/Peterson Group.

For additional works featured on SELECTED SHORTS, please visit http://www.symphonyspace.org/genres/seriesPage.php?seriesId=71&genreId=4

We’re interested in your response to these programs. Please comment on this site or visit www.selectedshorts.org

And for more thoughts on the stories in SHORTS, check out literary commentator Hannah Tinti’s site at http://hannahtinti.com

Guest host Jane Kaczmarek presents four works in which writers muse on the act of writing.

Three of the stories were featured in a special program in collaboration with New York University’s Creative Writing Program.  The readings took place at Lillian Vernon’s Creative Writers House, an historic 19th-century townhouse in Greenwich Village.

The event felt a little like a literary salon, so appropriately, the first story was Molly Giles’ playful “The Writers’ Model.”  In it, she’s adapted the idea of the traditional “artists’ model.”  An independent young woman counsels clueless male novelists about what women want, and how they think.  Molly Giles is the author of the novel Iron Shoes and the story collections Creek Walk and Other Stories and Rough Translations.  She teaches at the University of Arkansas.

Reader Kaneza Schaal has performed with experimental performance troupes such as The Wooster Group and Elevator Repair Service, and is developing a project, “Please, Bury Me,” based on the Egyptian Book of the Dead.  Previous work with SELECTED SHORTS includes her reading of Karen Russell’s “Reeling for the Empire.” 

Israeli writer and filmmaker Etgar Keret often works the act of writing—and the way a plotline can come to envelop its author—into his stories.  In “Creative Writing,” a wife and husband each take a writing class, and discover their own wild imaginations.  Keret’s published works in English include The Bus Driver Who Wanted to Be God, The NimrodFlipout, The Girl on the Fridge, and Suddenly, A Knock on the Door.  Reader Alex Karpovsky is also an independent filmmaker and has a featured role on the hit HBO series “Girls.”

Joan Didion helped to redefine American fiction and journalism in works like Play It as It Lays, A Book of Common Prayer, Slouching Towards Bethlehem, and The Year of Magical Thinking.  Her meticulous essays and unflinching novels mapped the psyche of a particular America.  In the reflective “On Keeping a Notebook,” she gives away some of her trade secrets.  (“I think we are well advised to keep on nodding terms with the people we used to be, whether we find them attractive or not”).  Reader Parker Posey’s many film appearances include Christopher Guest’s Waiting for Guffman, Best in Show, and A Mighty Wind, as well as Laws of Attraction, Superman Returns, and Hemingway and Gellhorn.    

Not from the Lillian Vernon evening, but in keeping with our theme, is a SHORTS favorite—T.C. Boyle’s delicious fantasy of a date with Jane Austen.  Isaiah Sheffer reads “I Dated Jane Austen.”

“The Writers Model,” by Molly Giles, performed by Kaneza Schaal

“Creative Writing,” by Etgar Keret, performed by Alex Karpovsky

“On Keeping a Notebook,” by Joan Didion, performed by Parker Posey

“I Dated Jane Austen,” by TC Boyle, performed by Isaiah Sheffer

The SELECTED SHORTS theme is David Peterson's “That's the Deal,” performed by the Deardorf/Peterson Group.

For additional works featured on SELECTED SHORTS, please visit http://www.symphonyspace.org/genres/seriesPage.php?seriesId=71&genreId=4

We’re interested in your response to these programs.  Please comment on this site or visit www.selectedshorts.org

And if you’d like to try your hand at writing short fiction, find out about this year’s Stella Kupferberg Memorial Short Story Prize, with the theme “Tales after Dark,” and guest judge Rick Moody.   

And for more thoughts on the stories in SHORTS, check out literary commentator Hannah Tinti’s site at http://hannahtinti.com

Guest host Neil Gaiman presents two ironic stories about wish fulfillment in this rebroadcast of a popular show from last season.

In D.H. Lawrence’s classic, “The Rocking Horse Winner,” a young boy tries to help a family obsessed by money. In the show, SHORTS literary commentator Hannah Tinti and guest host Gaiman discuss its unusual qualities.  Unlike Lawrence’s well-known novels of class conflict and adult desire, like Lady Chatterley’s Lover and Women in Love, this tale has a fairy-tale quality, says Gaiman, with hints of the Oedipus legend, Tinti notes.  It was originally published in 1926, and is performed here by the Irish actress Fionnula Flanagan, who bewitches Symphony Space audiences each year with her reading of Molly Bloom’s sexy soliloquy from James Joyce’s Ulysses. 

Our second story is Ben Loory’s provocative short, “The Book.”  It imagines an unusual bestseller—a book with, seemingly, no text.  Gaiman and Tinti discuss what this idea reveals about readers—the main character is a woman enraged by the book—and writers, with Gaiman saying a blank book is an invitation to reveal.

“The Book” is from Ben Loory’s story collection, Stories for Nighttime and Some for the Day, which was published in 2011 by Penguin. It is performed by Jane Kaczmarek, herself one of our guest hosts.

“The Rocking Horse Winner,” by D.H. Lawrence, performed by Fionnula Flanagan

“The Book,” by Ben Loory, performed by Jane Kaczmarek

The SELECTED SHORTS theme is David Peterson's “That's the Deal,” performed by the Deardorf/Peterson Group.

The SELECTED SHORTS theme is David Peterson's “That's the Deal,” performed by the Deardorf/Peterson Group.

For additional works featured on SELECTED SHORTS, please visit http://www.symphonyspace.org/genres/seriesPage.php?seriesId=71&genreId=4

We’re interested in your response to these programs.  Please comment on this site or visit www.selectedshorts.org

And if you’d like to try your hand at writing short fiction, find out about this year’s Stella Kupferberg Memorial Short Story Prize, with the theme “Tales after Dark,” and guest judge Rick Moody. http://www.selectedshorts.org/extras/writing-contest-2/

And for more thoughts on the stories in SHORTS, check out literary commentator Hannah Tinti’s site at http://hannahtinti.com

Guest host David Sedaris presents three stories about difficult choices.

Amy Hempel’s “In the Cemetery Where Al Jolson is Buried,” is about life and death, but you wouldn’t know it at first, as two women trade hilarious zingers and rebuild an old friendship.  Sedaris calls the story “beautifully devastating.” Amy Hempel’s works include At the Gates of the Animal Kingdom, Tumble Home, The Dog of the Marriage, and The Collected Stories.  She is the recipient of the Rea Award for the Short Story (2008) and the PEN/Malamud Award for Short Fiction (2009).  She teaches at Harvard University and Bennington College.  The reader is Mary Beth Hurt. 

Our second story is Tobias Wolff’s “The Night in Question,” a moral twister in which a brother in recovery preaches a sermon about ethical choices to his sister, and they disagree about the right thing to do.  Ultimately, it’s a tale that tries to measure love; Sedaris says Wolff sets “the gold standard for honesty.”  The reader is Lou Antonio.  Wolff is the author of the short story collections In the Garden of the North American Martyrs, The Night in Question, from which this story comes, and Our Story Begins: New and Selected Stories, as well as the memoirs This Boy’s Life, and In Pharaoh’s Army, among other works. 

Among his awards are the Rea Award for the Short Story, the O. Henry Award, and The Story Prize for Our Story Begins, for which there is an audio book edition.

On a lighter note, the narcissistic narrator of Frank Gannon’s “I Know What I’m Doing About All the Attention I’ve Been Getting,” is having a wardrobe crisis, and wants you to feel his pain.  Sedaris gives this character just the right touch of smug self-absorption.  Who else could pull off a line like, “you must be completely unaware of my socks”?  Gannon is a frequent contributor to The New Yorker.

“In the Cemetery Where Al Jolson is Buried,” by Amy Hempel, performed by Mary Beth Hurt

“The Night in Question,” by Tobias Wolff, performed by Lou Antonio 

“I Know What I'm Doing About All the Attention I've Been Getting,” by Frank Gannon, performed by David Sedaris

 The SELECTED SHORTS theme is David Peterson's “That's the Deal,” performed by the Deardorf/Peterson Group.

 For additional works featured on SELECTED SHORTS, please visit http://www.symphonyspace.org/genres/seriesPage.php?seriesId=71&genreId=4

We’re interested in your response to these programs.  Please comment on this site or visit www.selectedshorts.org

 And for more thoughts on the stories in SHORTS, check out literary commentator Hannah Tinti’s site at http://hannahtinti.com

Guest host Jane Kaczmarek presents four Christmas-themed works to bring you comfort, joy, and a little sass.

Our first two stories present very different family Christmases.  First, one of our favorite pieces, Ron Carlson’s “The H Street Sledding Record.”  Carlson now lives and teaches in California, at UC Irvine, but for a time he did this in Salt Lake City, Utah, his hometown, and that’s where this charming and funny piece is set.  It begins with a young father throwing horse dung on his roof on Christmas Eve, to simulate the landing of reindeer, and ends, as is fitting at Christmas, with a promise.   

Ron Carlson’s story collections include News of the World, Plan B for the Middle Class and A Kind of Flying.  His most recent novel is The Signal. 

Reader Keith Szarabajka is best known for his role as Mickey Kostmayer in the television series “The Equalizer,” among many other appearances.  He also lends his deep voice to many action-packed video games.  But here, he is the perfect dad, in Ron Carlson’s “The H Street Sledding Record.”

Next, Frank O’Connor’s “Christmas Morning” gives us a richly detailed picture of a family in turn-of-the-century Ireland, but this family’s Christmas is overshadowed by poverty.  It’s a touching portrait of a mother’s attempt to make things perfect for her young sons one day of the year, and a coming-of-age story told through the eyes of one of them.  The story first appeared in the New Yorker magazine, and was later anthologized in the celebratory volume Christmas At The New Yorker.

Reader Malachy McCourt knows this landscape well—it’s the same emotional world that informs his memoirs A Monk Swimming and Singing My Him Song, and his late brother Frank’s bestselling Angela’s Ashes. 

George Shephard’s “Occurrence on the Six Seventeen” is a whimsical comedy from a different era, which was also anthologized in Christmas At The New Yorker.  When we think of Christmas miracles they are usually either exalted—the birth of Christ—or sentimental, as in the classic movie “Miracle on 34th Street,” in which a department-store Santa turns out to be the real deal.  But in this story, published in 1939, George Shephard imagines a smaller miracle: sober, self-absorbed commuters, “with necks that know exactly how long they must be pressed against the seat back”, briefly unite in Christmas joie de vivre. 

Tony Roberts, who reads this story, is a long-time Broadway star and featured player in many Woody Allen films.  Most recently, he guest starred as Ebenezer Scrooge in New York Public Radio’s live performance of Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol.  

And speaking of “Bah, Humbug!” humorist Calvin Trillin is dreaming of the perfect Christmas—anywhere but here.  His witty ditty “Christmas in Qatar” bemoans meaningless gifts, underdone feasts, and appalling relations.  Enjoy.

“The H Street Sledding of Record,” by Ron Carlson, performed by Keith Szarabajka

“Christmas Morning,” by Frank O’Connor, performed by Malachy McCourt

“Occurrence on the Six Seventeen,” by George Shephard, performed by Tony Roberts

“Christmas in Qatar” (poem), by Calvin Trillin, performed by Calvin Trillin

The SELECTED SHORTS theme is David Peterson's “That's the Deal,” performed by the Deardorf/Peterson Group.

For additional works featured on SELECTED SHORTS, please visit http://www.symphonyspace.org/genres/seriesPage.php?seriesId=71&genreId=4

We’re interested in your response to these programs.  Please comment on this site or visit www.selectedshorts.org

And for more thoughts on the stories in SHORTS, check out literary commentator Hannah Tinti’s site at http://hannahtinti.com