fiction – Page 45 – Andrew Careaga

Friday Five: recent reads

Five things that caught my eye recently:

Inspiration in a flash (or fifty). Read some of the stories selected for the Wigleaf top 50 2024 longlist of flash fictions. Congratulations to the authors who made this list!
The century’s 100 best books, according to the New York Times (gift link).
How to doomproof your reading. Good stuff from Junot Diaz’s StoryWorlds Substack.
Happy five-year anniversary to one of my favorite online poetry journals, Sparks of Calliope. And in case you missed it, here’s my April 2024 Friday Five interview with editor Randal Burd.
Enjoy this collection of summer-y poems by Mary Oliver, William Carlos Williams, Derek Walcot, and others, courtesy of Maya C. Popa.

Image via Pexels.

John Updike (and others) on why fiction matters

Thoughts on “the subtlest instrument for self-examination … that mankind has invented yet”

My town’s public library held a used-book sale recently, and among the armful of treasures I picked up there was The Writer’s Digest Handbook of Short Story Writing, Volume II. I’m a sucker for books about the writing craft, even if they’re nearly 40 years old (this one was published in 1988) and especially if they’re in reasonably good shape and only cost 50 cents. Shut up and take my money, I say.