Short Story Month: Minot, Moody, and Strout Read Cheever at The Center for Fiction on May 31

May is National Short Story Month, and this year (for once) The Story Prize has something planned. Thanks to New York's Center for Fiction, we're going to be co-presenting a reading to celebrate The Stories of John Cheever, a collection you'll find on the shelves of many passionate readers and writers of short fiction.

Why a Cheever reading now? Because he will have been 100 on May 27. John Cheever, the man, has gotten a lot of attention in recent years, with the release of his diaries and a highly-regarded biography by Blake Bailey. In fact, the 92nd Street Y is having an event on May 17 with Bailey, Michael Chabon, and writers and offspring Ben and Susan Cheever. So when The Center for Fiction's Executive Director, Noreen Tomassi, and I discussed having an event there, we decided to put the focus on what is probably Cheever's greatest legacy—his short stories.

(L to R) Susan Minot, Rick Moody, and Elizabeth Strout

On May 31, at 7 p.m., at The Center for Fiction, authors Susan Minot, Rick Moody, and Elizabeth Strout will each read from and discuss a Cheever story. Minot's choice is "The Sorrows of Gin," Moody will read from "The Jewels of the Cabots," and Strout will focus on "The Worm in the Apple"—all interesting selections from among an oeuvre that includes "Goodbye, My Brother," "The Enormous Radio," "The Five-Forty-Eight," "Reunion," and "The Swimmer."

Susan Minot, Rick Moody, and Elizabeth Strout each have New England roots—as did Cheever. And the work of all three has affinities with his. I'm expecting a memorable and fitting tribute to a great writer with a continuing and widespread influence on other writers—a nice way, we hope, to close out a month celebrating the story form.

It's National Short Story Month (Beta Version)!

Ah, May, flowers blooming, sun shining, short stories gaining wide recognition. Okay, the last one may be a stretch, but some of us are rolling out something we like to call National Short Story Month (or Short Story Month or International Short Story Month (you get the idea)) to help make that happen. Dan Wickett at Emerging Writers Network is a real force behind these efforts, and he has even managed to get a nifty logo (to the left) designed by Steven Seighman of Dzanc Books and online magazine Monkeybicycle. Dan will be posting often this month on Emerging Writers. I'll try to chime in every now and then. In the meantime, those interested can join the discussion at Readerville (and suggest a story collection for Barack Obama to read).

For now, before we get a full-fledged National Short Story Month off the ground with nationwide events and community-wide involvement (schools, bookstores, libraries, etc.), the best way to celebrate is, of course, to read some short fiction. If you want recommendations for collections published in the past five years (2004-08), you can visit The Story Prize site, where you can find the titles of our 15 past finalists and 61 other notable short story volumes (a feature we didn't add until 2005). The buying links may not work for all of the books, but you can easily find them on IndieBound.org and other online booksellers, if not your local bookstore or library.

And don't forget to read literary magazines that publish short stories (in print and online). There are hundreds to choose from, and you might discover a great new short story writer in any one of them, including The New Yorker.

National Short Story Month: What Next?

The people have spoken (some of them, at least), and the result of our poll so far is that a whopping 90% of respondents agree that yes, we do need a National Short Story month.

When I posted about this a couple of weeks ago, I didn't realize that some had already declared May National Short Story Month, including Dan Wickett of the Emerging Writers Network and Dzanc Books, who put forward this idea two years ago. When we rolled out The Story Prize in 2004, I was making some noise about the idea myself (if you follow the link, please ignore the awful caricature), and it wasn't the first time.

But it's going to take more than a little noise to make it happen. For NSSM to come about and have any impact, it will need to have a strong organization behind it, a real concerted and nationally coordinated effort, and buy-in from bookstores, schools, and libraries, not to mention authors and publishers. Readerville has been kind enough to host a thread to discuss National Short Story Month, so please weigh in if you have ideas about how to make this happen.