I’ve been posting quite a bit lately about the sources for some of the stories in my new collection, “The Mutual UFO Network.” From personal experience, to second-hand anecdote, to a heard first line, to an image that fascinated me, to a memorable person I knew, I felt my way toward a story. It’s one…

I’m making a special Saturday post because I’m excited about going to Dayton, Ohio, tomorrow, June 3, to introduce my new story collection, The Mutual UFO Network, to folks at Books & Co. I’ll be there at 2pm to talk a bit about short stories, to read briefly from the new book, to chat with…

I thought I’d continue my series of posts about how stories sometimes come to me. Often they begin with a voice. A narrator speaks, and I listen. I let the voice pique my curiosity. I begin to wonder what’s happened in this narrator’s life that makes it impossible for him or her to remain silent.…

Last week I wrote about one of the ways that stories often come to me. Sometimes a memorable character draws me into a narrative, and I follow the story he or she creates to see where it might lead. I’ve also been called to a story because I play the “what if?” game with either…

Henry James, in The Art of Fiction, advises writers to “Try to be one of those on whom nothing is lost.” Stories are all around us. We just need to take the time to listen and look. They come in a variety of ways. Sometimes a person catches our eye, and we think, “hmm, I…

Once upon a time, I lived in a place where a man had a habit of lying in the street at night, looking up at the stars. He was a troubled man who sometimes sat on his front porch, having conversations with whatever voices he heard in his head. Often these conversations were violent ones,…

Last night, we celebrated another graduating class from the MFA program here at The Ohio State University with a gala reading and reception. It’s that time of year when thousands of MFA grads across the country come up against that question, “What’s next?” The truth is that for many of those thousands of grads the…

I was a young writer at a time when the short story enjoyed an era of great popularity, an era of Raymond Carver, Bobbie Ann Mason, Jayne Ann Phillips, Ann Beattie, Tobias Wolff, Richard Ford, et. al. Bill Buford, then editor of Granta, coined the term “Dirty Realism” to describe the work being done in…

Around five o’clock one evening, an emergency notice came on my phone, advising me to seek shelter immediately. Then the tornado sirens began to wail. My wife Cathy and I gathered up our orange tabby, Stella the Cat, and headed to our basement. The rain came and the hail. Then, everything went still. The wind…