Scott Setrakian is the president of the William Saroyan Foundation. At the time we recorded this interview, he had just come back from Armenia, where he had taken part in a seven-day event called Saroyan Days. In this episode, he tells me about the life and works of Armenian American short story writer William Saroyan. Saroyan’s is a story of determination, perseverance, Pulitzer Prices, Academy Awards, and (above all) of superb writing! 
 
Work mentioned: 
 
William Saroyan, The Daring Young Man on the Flying Trapeze (Faber and Faber, 2024). 
William Saroyan, ‘The Pomegranate Trees’, in The Atlantic (February 1938). 
William Saroyan, Letters from 74 rue Taitbout (World Publishing Company, 1969). 
William Saroyan, The Human Comedy (Harcourt, Brace, 1943) 
William Saroyan, The Bicycle Rider in Beverly Hills (Scribner, 1952) 
William Saroyan, Places Where I’ve Done Time (Davis-Poynter, 1973) 
William Saroyan, Where the Bones Go (Pr at California st, 2002) 
 
William Saroyan Foundation website: William Saroyan Foundation

Podcast intro and outro credits: Shield, Leroy, Taylor Holmes, and Robert W Service. The shooting of Dan McGrew. 1923. Audio. Retrieved from the Library of Congress.

Ailsa Cox is a professor Emerita at Edge Hill University (UK) and a short story writer. In this second part of the interview we discuss famous pieces of short story writing advice like “show don’t tell”, the Freitag pyramid, ending with a moment of insight and much more! Listen to find out what is a fact and what is fiction! 
 
Works mentioned: 
 
Sarah Hall, ‘Sarah Hall on why we should have a short story laureate’, Guardian, Oct. 11 2013, https://www.theguardian.com/books/2013/oct/11/sarah-hall-short-story-laureate. 
George Saunders, A Swim in a Pond in the Rain (Bloomsbury, 2021). 
Katherine Mansfield, ‘At the Bay’, in Selected Stories (Oxford University Press, 2002). 
Ailsa Cox, ‘How Loud the Birds’, in Katherine Mansfield and The Garden Party and Other Stories, ed. by Gerri Kimber and Todd Martin (Edinburgh University Press, 2022), pp. 143-52. 
Susan Lohafer, Reading for Storyness: Preclosure Theory, Empirical Poetics, & Culture in the Short Story (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003). 
C.D. Rose, Walter Benjamin Stares at the Sea (Melville House, 2024). 
Sarah Schofield, ‘Safely Gathered In’, in Safely Gathered In (Comma Press, 2021). 
Charles Baxter, ‘Against Epiphanies’, in Burning Down the House. Essays on Fiction (Graywolf Press, 1997), pp. 51-78. 
Chris Power, Survival of the smallest: the contested history of the English short story, New Statesman, 27 June 2017. 
Malachi McIntosh, Parables, Fables, Nightmares (Emma Press, 2023). 
Daisy Johnson, The Hotel (Penguin, 2024). 
Elizabeth Strout, Anything is Possible (Viking, 2017). 
Grace Paley, ‘A Conversation with My Father’,  The Collected Stories of Grace Paley (Farrar, Strauss & Giroux, 1994), pp.232-237 (minute 28-29) 
Paul March-Russell, The Short Story: An Introduction (Edinburgh University Press, 2009). 
 
Writing on the Wall, https://writingonthewall.org.uk/.

Podcast intro and outro credits: Shield, Leroy, Taylor Holmes, and Robert W Service. The shooting of Dan McGrew. 1923. Audio. Retrieved from the Library of Congress.

Ailsa Cox is a Professor Emerita at Edge Hill University (UK) and a short story writer. In this first part of the interview, we discuss famous claims about short stories and short story writing, like reading short stories in one sitting, the connection between short stories and poetic language, and much more. Listen to find out if they are facts or fiction! 
 
Works cited:
 
Ailsa Cox, Writing Short Stories. Third Edition (Routledge, 2025). 
Edgar Allan Poe, ‘The Philosophy of Composition’, in Essays and Reviews (Library of America, 1984) 
Leila Martin, Kodavision (Nightjar Press, 2025) 
Colm Tóibín, Mothers and Sons (Picador, 2006). 
Helen Simpson, Constitutional (Vintage, 2006). 
Allan Weiss, The Mini-Cycle (Routledge, 2021). 
Zoe Gilbert, Folk (Bloomsbury, 2018) 
Paul March-Russell, ‘Anthropocene feminism and the Weird temporalities of landscape’, Short Fiction in Theory and Practice, 15:1-2 (2025), pp. 81-95. 
Katherine Mansfield, ‘Bliss’, in Selected Stories (Oxford University Press, 2002). 
Janice Galloway, Blood (Vintage, 1991). 
Raymond Carver, ‘Fires’, in Call If You Need Me (The Harvill Press, 2000), pp.  93-106. 
Alice Munro, Runaway (Chatto & Windus, 2005).

Nightjar Press, https://nightjarpress.weebly.com/

Podcast intro and outro credits: Shield, Leroy, Taylor Holmes, and Robert W Service. The shooting of Dan McGrew. 1923. Audio. Retrieved from the Library of Congress.

Andrew Levy is professor of English and Creative Writing and the Edna Cooper Chair of English at Butler University in Indiana (USA). In this episode, I get to ask him a few questions about his book The Culture and Commerce of the American Short Story (Cambridge UP, 1992), a real watershed in short story criticism.

Works referenced (in order of appearance) 
 
Andrew Levy, The Culture and Commerce of the American Short Story (Cambridge University Press, 1992). 
Edgar Allan Poe, ‘Nathaniel Hawthorne’, in Essays and Reviews, ed. by G. R. Thompson (The Library of America, 1984), pp. 568-88. 
Edgar Allan Poe, ‘The Tell-Tale Heart’, in The Penguin Complete Tales and Poems of Edgar Allan Poe (Viking, 2011), pp. 216-20. 
Edgar Allan Poe, ‘The Philosophy of Composition,’ in Essays and Reviews, ed. by G. R. Thompson (The Library of America, 1984), pp. 13-25. 
John Cheever, ‘The Swimmer,’ in A Vision of the World: Selected Stories, ed. by Julian Barnes (Vintage, 2021), pp. 241-56. 
Ruth Suckow, ‘The Short Story’, Saturday Review of Literature 4.17 (1927), pp. 317-18. 
Percival Everett, James (Doubleday, 2024).
Andrew Levy, Huck Finn's America: Mark Twain and the Era That Shaped His Masterpiece (Simon and Schuster, 2015).
Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (Penguin Classics, 2006). 
Jocelyn A. Chadwick, The Jim Dilemma: Reading Race in Huckleberry Finn (University Press of Mississippi, 1998). 
Ralph Wiley, Spike Lee’s Huckleberry Finn, (unpublished screenplay) © copyright Ralph Wiley, 1997. 
Kelly Link, ‘Skindler’s Veil’, in When Things Get Dark: Stories Inspired by Shirley Jackson, ed. by Ellen Datlow (Titan Books, 2021).

Podcast intro and outro credits: Shield, Leroy, Taylor Holmes, and Robert W Service. The shooting of Dan McGrew. 1923. Audio. Retrieved from the Library of Congress.

How does the short story form contribute to our understanding of life and the world? To find out, listen to this episode of the podcast, in which I get to interview prof. Michael Basseler, from Justus-Liebig University, author of the monograph An Organon of Life Knowledge: Genres and Functions of the Short Story in North America.

Works cited:

Michael Basseler, An Organon of Life Knowledge: Genres and Functions of the Short Story in North America (Transcript Verlag, 2019).
Ottomar Ette, ‘Literature as Knowledge for Living, Literary Studies as Science for Living’, PMLA 125.4 (2010), pp. 977-93.
Charles Baxter, ‘Against Epiphanies’, in Burning Down the House. Essays on Fiction. (Graywolf Press, 1997), pp. 51-78. 
Sherwood Anderson, ‘I Want to Know Why’, in The Triumph of the Egg (W. B. Huebsch, 1921). 
Washington Irving, ‘Rip Van Winkle’, in The Legend of Sleepy Hollow and Other Stories (Penguin, 2014).
Zach Williams, Beautiful Days (Penguin, 2024).

In this episode I get to interview Heuijung Hur on her collection Failed Summer Vacation, which has recently been published in English with Scratchbooks. Listen to Heuijung talk about her favourite stories in the collection and what it feels like to read her own work in translation.

Works cited:
Heuijung Hur, Failed Summer Vacation, trans. by Paige Aniya Morris (Scratchbooks, 2025).
George Saunders, Tenth of December (Bloomsbury, 2013).
Han Yujoo, The Impossible Fairy Tale, trans. by Janet Hong (Graywolf Press, 2017). 
Gu Byeong-mo, The Old Woman with a Knife, trans. by Chi-Young Kim (Canongate Books, 2022). 
Kim Jiyoung, Born 1982, trans. by Jamie Chang (Scribner, 2016). 
Ivan Turgenev, First Love, trans. by Isaiah Berlin (Penguin Classics, 2004).

Podcast intro and outro credits: Shield, Leroy, Taylor Holmes, and Robert W Service. The shooting of Dan McGrew. 1923. Audio. Retrieved from the Library of Congress.

Michael Collins is Reader in American Studies at King’s College, London and co-editor of the Cambridge Companion to the American Short Story (2024). In this episode, I ask him why the short story is at once so popular in the US and at the same time relatively underrepresented in academic research. 
 
Works cited:

Michael J. Collins, The Drama of the American Short Story, 1800-1865 (University of Michigan Press, 2016).
Michael J. Collins, “Introduction”, in The Cambridge Companion to the American Short Story (Cambridge University Press, 2024). 
Michael J. Collins and Gavin Jones (eds.) The Cambridge Companion to the American Short Story (Cambridge University Press, 2024). 
Frank Norris, ‘An Opening for Novelists. Great Opportunities for Fiction-Writers in San Francisco’, in Novels and Essays, ed. by Donald Pizer (The Library of America, 1986), pp. 1112-14. 
Bret Harte, ‘The Rise of the “Short Story”’, The Cornhill Magazine, 7.37 (1899), pp. 1-8. 
Walter Benjamin, “The Storyteller”, in Illuminations, ed. by Hannah Arendt, trans. by Harry Zohn (Schocken Books, 1968). 
Edgar Allan Poe, ‘The Masque of the Red Death’, in Poetry and Tales (Library of America, 1984). 
Eric D. Walrond, Tropic Death (Liveright, 2013).

Studies in the American Short Story, (https://scholarlypublishingcollective.org/psup/sass) 

In this two-part episode, I have the privilege of chatting about Lucia Berlin’s short fiction with writer (and Lucia Berlin’s personal friend) Elizabeth Geoghegan. In the first part, Elizabeth tells me how she met Lucia Berlin and what kind of teacher she was; we also discuss the story “Angel’s Laundromat”. In the second part of the episode, I ask Elizabeth about the stories “A Manual for Cleaning Women,” “So Long,” and “Carmen”. A very special thank you to David Berlin and the Lucia Berlin Estate for allowing me to include two clips of Lucia Berlin reading “Angel’s Laundromat”. You can listen to the whole reading on Soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/readlucia/lucia-berlin-angels-laundromat 
 
Works mentioned (in order of appearance): 
Elizabeth Geoghegan, eightball (SFWP, 2019) 
Elizabeth Geoghegan, Natural Disasters (She Writes Press, 2014) 
Elizabeth Geoghegan, The Marco Chronicles (SFWP, 2023) 
Lucia Berlin, Welcome Home: A Memoir with Selected Photographs and Letters (Picador, 2018) 

Stories from Lucia Berlin’s A Manual for Cleaning Women (Picador, 2015)  
- “Here It Is Saturday” 
- “Angel’s Laundromat” 
- “A Manual for Cleaning Women” 
- “So Long” 
- “Grief” 
- “Mama” 
- “Carmen” 
- “Unmanageable” 

In this two-part episode, I have the privilege of chatting about Lucia Berlin’s short fiction with writer (and Lucia Berlin’s personal friend) Elizabeth Geoghegan. In the first part, Elizabeth tells me how she met Lucia Berlin and what kind of teacher she was; we also discuss the story “Angel’s Laundromat”. In the second part of the episode, I ask Elizabeth about the stories “A Manual for Cleaning Women,” “So Long,” and “Carmen”. A very special thank you to David Berlin and the Lucia Berlin Estate for allowing me to include two clips of Lucia Berlin reading “Angel’s Laundromat”. You can listen to the whole reading on Soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/readlucia/lucia-berlin-angels-laundromat 
 
Works mentioned (in order of appearance): 
Elizabeth Geoghegan, eightball (SFWP, 2019) 
Elizabeth Geoghegan, Natural Disasters (She Writes Press, 2014) 
Elizabeth Geoghegan, The Marco Chronicles (SFWP, 2023) 
Lucia Berlin, Welcome Home: A Memoir with Selected Photographs and Letters (Picador, 2018) 

Stories from Lucia Berlin’s A Manual for Cleaning Women (Picador, 2015)  
- “Here It Is Saturday” 
- “Angel’s Laundromat” 
- “A Manual for Cleaning Women” 
- “So Long” 
- “Grief” 
- “Mama” 
- “Carmen” 
- “Unmanageable” 

In this episode, Prof. Irwin Streight (Royal Military College of Canada) discusses the unexpected legacy of short story writer Flannery O'Connor on popular singers and songwriters such as Bruce Springsteen, U2, Lucinda Williams, and Nick Cave.


Works mentioned (in order of appearance): 
 
Lucinda Williams, “Get Right With God”, from Essence (Lost Highway, 2001). 
Searching for the Wrong-Eyed Jesus, dir. by Andrew Douglas (UK, USA, 2003). 
Borat, dir. by Larry Charles (USA, 2006). 
Irwin Streight, Flannery at the Grammys (University Press of Mississippi, 2024). 
Bruce Springsteen, The River (Columbia, 1980). 
Bruce Springsteen, Nebraska (Columbia, 1982). 
Bruce Springsteen, Devils & Dust (Columbia, 2005). 
Bruce Springsteen, The Ghost of Tom Joad (Columbia, 1995). 
Bruce Springsteen, Western Stars (Columbia, 2019).
Bruce Springsteen, Born to Run (Simon & Schuster, 2016).
U2, The Joshua Tree (Island, 1987). 
Mary Gauthier, “Wheel Inside the Wheel”, from Mercy Now (UMG Recordings, 2005). 
Nick Cave, Carnage (Goliath, 2021). 
Nick Cave, And the Ass Saw the Angel (Harper Collins, 1989).
Warren Zanes, Deliver Me From Nowhere: The Making of Bruce Springsteen's Nebraska (Crown, 2023).
Mark McGurl, The Program Era: Postwar Fiction and the Rise of Creative Writing (Harvard University Press, 2009). 
 
O'Connor’s stories mentioned:

From A Good Man is Hard to Find (Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1955): 
- “A Good Man Is Hard to Find” 
- “Good Country People”

From Everything That Rises Must Converge (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1965): 
- “Greenleaf” 
- “Parker’s Back” 
- “Revelation” 
- “Judgement Day” 
- “Everything That Rises Must Converge”


Podcast intro and outro credits: Shield, Leroy, Taylor Holmes, and Robert W Service. The shooting of Dan McGrew. 1923. Audio. Retrieved from the Library of Congress.

Meet Tom Conaghan, founder of Scratch Books! In this episode, I ask Tom what it takes and what it's like to run a publisher entirely dedicated to short fiction. Find out more about the origins of Scratch Books, their amazing publications and short story competition!

Works cited (in order of appearance):
John Cheever, “Reunion”, in A Vision of the World: Selected Stories, ed. by Julian Barnes (Vintage, 2021), pp. 199-203. 
Reverse Engineering, ed. by Tom Conaghan (Scratch Books, 2022). 
Reverse Engineering II, ed. by Tom Conaghan (Scratch Books, 2022). 
Gaston Bachelard, The Poetics of Space, trans by. Maria Jolas (Beacon Press, 1969). 
Conversations with David Foster Wallace, ed. by Stephen J. Burn (University Press of Mississippi, 2012). 
Yiyun Li, Wednesday’s Child (Farrar, Strauss and Giroux, 2023). 
Lydia Davis, “The Cornmeal”, in Can’t and Won’t (Farrar, Strauss and Giroux, 2014), p.33.  
Louis MacNeice, “Snow”, in Collected Poems (Faber&Faber, 2015). 
Tessa Hadley, After the Funeral (Penguin, 2023). 
 
Organisations mentioned:
Scratch A4: https://www.scratch-books.co.uk/scratcha4competition 
The word factory: https://thewordfactory.tv/ 
City Lit: https://www.citylit.ac.uk/


Podcast intro and outro credits: Shield, Leroy, Taylor Holmes, and Robert W Service. The shooting of Dan McGrew. 1923. Audio. Retrieved from the Library of Congress, .

Intro credits: Shield, Leroy, Taylor Holmes, and Robert W Service. The shooting of Dan McGrew. 1923. Audio. Retrieved from the Library of Congress, .