Short Story Month?

That's right.  While the poets of the world have shrewdly united to have April be National Poetry Month every year, creating a fair amount of attention for their craft, we (proverbial) here at the EWN have decided that we sort of like concentrating on one form for a lengthy period of time, so we're declaring that around here, May will be Short Story Month.  While we don't believe that we'll have WITS stories to link to and discuss like we have this month, we do have more than enough short story collections lying around the homestead here that we have been waiting for a reason to crack open.

One of the original ideas behind this Work of the Day idea was to dip into those collections of stories and poems that I didn't think would ever get full reviews.  So, in the month of May, while some of the stories will come from online journals, and print journals, there will also be at least one story per day coming from a story collection.  In many cases it will be an admission to myself that I might never get to fully read the entire collection.  Some come to mind immediately - Hannah Tinti's Animal Crackers for one.  I have the hardcover version of this and the paperback version has already been out for 2 years and 23 days.  I've moved this book close to the top fo my TBR pile at least 20 times during the 3 years I've owned it.  For some reason it's not made it, even from the occasional spot on top of the TBR pile, into my hands. 

Recently, I posted about a story from Daniel Stolar's The Middle of the Night.  To me, this was a similar case - it was a collection I'd had since early 2005 and had not gotten to yet.  There were many short story collections received between 2004 and 2006 and at least 31 of them will be looked into during the month of May.  Maybe more.  Hopefully, it will be a nice way to get some publicity (albeit slight considering it IS the EWN blog) for some of those authors and publicists that were kind enough to send books my way.

So, hopefully you'll continue visiting each day during April so you can read about various poems, written both by students in the Houston area, and those by authors a little older than fourth grade.  But I also hope you'll generate some excitement about EWN Short Story Month in May!