I got a nice ‘heads up’ from Andrew Gallix over at 3:AM Magazine’s Buzzwords blog yesterday on a newly launched web site from Harper Perennial, which focuses solely on the short story format. For our delight and delectation Fifty-Two Stories will be sharing a short story every week throughout 2009. They can explain it a lot more eloquently then I ever could, so here’s the ‘about’ blurb from Cal Morgan over at Fifty-Two Stories:
“At Harper Perennial, where I work, we traffic in stories of all kinds. And we have a special fondness for the short story—self-contained, crystalline, newborn, perfect. This year we’re celebrating the thriving art of the story by sharing a new one every week: most of them new, a few of them classics, from authors you know and some you don’t, each of them treasurable in its language or wit or human insight.”
Sounds awesome (especially the bit about short stories being ‘cystalline, newborn and perfect’ – nicely worded, and I agree..vehemently 
)) and with only one story being posted per week, there’s no excuse for any of us short story lovers not to read them – especially those of you on my 100 Shots of Short reading challenge ).
As it’s the end of January, Fifty-Two Stories is already four stories in, but they’re all on the shorter side of short so it should be no problem catching up. Yay! another use for my Sony Reader! Thanks Harper Perennial!
Talking of Harper Perennial I got a pleasant surprise from them today in the shape of an advanced copy of Callisto by Torsten Krol, all the way from my most favourite city in the world – New York (quite the journey considering I live in Scotland). Although such a monumental effort to get a book to me wouldn’t influence my review of it (something I make clear in my Book Review Pledge), I’m deeply honoured and deeply grateful that Harper Perennial gone to such an effort for little ole me (although the postman was distinctly underwhelmed, mainly because of my doorstep whooping )). So, thanks again Harper Perennial – you really made my day!
About Rob
Thank you for this–what a great resource for short stories! I love that they’re doing both old and new ones. And, by the way, I’m not on your sidebar for 100 Shots of Short, and would like to be.
says:
Ali, my pleasure but it’s Harper P’s Cal Morgan deserves all the credit of course, and not me
)
About adding you to the list of ‘Short Shooters’ Did you already request to be added? If you did then please accept my utmost apologies. Regardless, I’ll fix it out straight away