No Substance

No Substance #94: A Year of Short Fiction

A year ago yesterday, on the 29th of May, I started reading one short story a day. Some days, if the story was quite small, I read two. Today, for example, I read two very short pieces from Anna Tambour’s Road to Neozon. During this time, I read collections by Julio Cortázar, Han Seong-nan, James Joyce, Leah Hampton, Geoff Ryman, Clarice Lispector, Haruki Murakami, Anna Seghers, William Gibson, Anna Kavan, John Langan, Guadalupe Nettel, Izumi Susuki, Peter Carey, Mariana Enriquez, Danilo Kiš, Helen DeWitt, Hasan Blasim, Vanessa Onwuemezi, Julio Cortázar, Patricia Highsmith, A.E. Coppard, Mahasweti Devi, Steve Rasnic Tem, Caitlin R. Kiernan, Roberto Bolaño, Silvina Ocampo, Bennett Sims, Bora Chung, and Michael Chabon. I read only one author twice and that was Julio Cortázar. I also only abandoned one collection and that was Samanta Schweblin’s