Speaking of the Short Story

Though culture wars may rage, one truth remains clear, and it arises from this collection of interviews with multicultural writers: The short story form is a favorite genre, and the writers included in this book express their passionate regard for it.

The short story links them, and in speaking of this select and disciplining narrative form, they find their views to be remarkably similar, although generations and cultures may separate them.

The interviews show that the world of each story has its own constructs, syntax, style, and voice, and regardless of differences, every story spirals back upon itself. Although amateur writers delight in writing short stories, the form demands a master touch, like that of the interviewees.

In this collection twenty interviews (seventeen from writers and three from scholars of the short story) reveal the demanding and exhilarating requirements that the short story imposes upon its practitioners. One surmises that if Poe himself were among these, he too would underline the commentaries of these present day short story writers. As they speak, they comment not only upon story writing but also upon the publishing market, the social context for writing and dissemination of short fiction, the pedagogy of short fiction instruction, and the politics that affect both the themes and the structure of the story. Those interviewed include Isabel Allende, Rudolfo A. Anaya, Arturo Arias, Ray A. Young Bear, Clark Blaise, Judith Ortiz Cofer, Moira Crone, Ellen Douglas, Richard Ford, Robert Franklin Gish, Wilson Harris, Shirley Geok-Lin Lim, Susan Lohafer, Charles May, Bharati Mukherjee, Simon Ortiz, Mary Rohrberger, Minoli Salgado, Sonia Sanchez, and Leslie Marmon Silko.

Farhat Iftekharuddin is a professor of English at the University of Texas at Brownsville. Mary Rohrberger is a professor of English at the University of Northern Iowa.