Four Stories and More

I had been looking forward to the Four Stories: One evening, four urban narratives event since I missed November's get together. L. was late arriving home. I waited for him. Then we decided to walk instead of take the bus. We found the unmarked door for the Enormous Room. There was a bouncer. He announced that the event was "filled to capacity." Can you believe it? A bouncer at a literary event. I love this town. Here is what we missed:

Cain and Abel--Stories of Family on the Edge
with the following authors:

Elizabeth Benedict, National Book Award and Los Angeles Times Fiction Prize finalist, and author of The Practice of Deceit, a Book Sense Pick, Book of the Month Club selection, and All Things Considered (NPR) recommended novel (www.elizabethbenedict.com)

Jaime Clarke, author of the novel We're So Famous, co-founder of Post Road Magazine, and teacher of writing at Emerson College whose work has appeared in The Mississippi Review, AGNI, and Chelsea

Tom Perrotta, acclaimed author of the novels Little Children, Election, Bad Haircut, The Wishbones, and Joe College

Megan Sullivan, associate professor of writing at Boston University and author of Women in Northern Ireland, Irish Women and Film: 1980-1990, and The Embezzler's Daughter: A memoir

We will have to wait until next YEAR for the next event. A bouncer.

Luckily, our walk was not for naught. We stopped at the Middle East, our first time there. We ate a little falafel, a little baklava, drank something zippy and headed home before the music started.

In other narrative news here is a little blurb:

Shortlist of Short Stories By EDWARD WYATT

December 7, 2005, New York Times

Three collections of stories, from a writing heavyweight, a small-press author and an Irish immigrant, have been named finalists for the second annual Story Prize, a $20,000 award for short fiction that will be presented after a reading by the authors at the New School in Manhattan on Jan. 25. The finalists are Jim Harrison, the acclaimed novelist, poet and essayist, for "The Summer He Didn’t Die," three novellas published by Atlantic Monthly Press; Maureen F. McHugh, best known for her science fiction novels, for "Mothers & Other Monsters," 13 stories published by Small Beer Press of Northampton, Mass.; and Patrick O’Keeffe, a lecturer at the University of Michigan who immigrated to the United States from Ireland in the mid-1980’s, for "The Hill Road," four stories published by Viking.