Author George Singleton calls UNC professor Marianne Gingher’s new book, a collection of short-short stories by North Carolina writers, “a tempting, dangerous box of lit, rare firecrackers.”
Long Story Short: Flash Fiction by Sixty-Five of North Carolina’s Finest Writers (UNC Press) is edited by Gingher, a professor of English and comparative literature. The book of short-shorts gives readers a small, yet satisfying, taste of fiction and all of its wonders.
Each writer in the collection was not allowed to write more than 1,800 words. The longest story in the book, by Michael Malone, is 1,678 words; the shortest, by Carrie Knowles, is 95 words. No one short-short is alike: each one has its own tale with a variety of characters and settings. From somber to comedic, the stories give the reader a satisfying, thoughtful experience.
As Gingher says in the introduction, “A short-short is scant but not slight; it is simultaneously rich and fat-free. You tend to go, ‘Aha!’ at the end of one. There’s a flash of satisfaction and surprising reward …”
With both established and emerging writers, each one brings a different voice to the collection. Many of the writers included are UNC alumni or faculty, including Daphne Athas, Doris Betts, Fred Chappell, Sarah Dessen, Pam Durban, Clyde Edgerton, Jill McCorkle, Robert Morgan, Randall Kenan, Bland Simpson, Lee Smith, Elizabeth Spencer and Daniel Wallace. Gingher’s own short-short story is titled “The Thing.” Max Steele, a former director of the UNC creative writing program, is also featured, and Gingher credits him for making her appreciate the short-short story.
From 1997 to 2002, Gingher directed the creative writing program at UNC. She writes both fiction and nonfiction, including Bobby Rex’s Greatest Hit, Teen Angel & Other Stories of Wayward Love, How to Have a Happy Childhood and A Girl’s Life: Horses, Boys, Wedding and Luck. Bobby Rex and Teen Angel were recognized with ALA Notable and Best Book awards, and the former also won North Carolina’s Sir Walter Raleigh Prize in 1987. In 2001, her memoir A Girl’s Life was recognized as Foreword Magazine’s “Book of the Year.” She recently published a memoir, Adventures in Pen Land: One Writer's Journey from Inklings to Ink.
For more information, or to order the book: http://uncpress.unc.edu/browse/book_detail?title_id=1651
Editor’s note: On Oct. 28 at 3:30 p.m., Gingher will read from Long Story Short at the Bull’s Head Bookshop on the UNC campus.
