Why? Why do we need a National Short Story Month every May. There's an understanding that there should indeed be a National Poetry Month as it's a common fact (well, at least a common belief, to be very honest, I have zero idea if it's a fact or not) that poetry collections don't sell scads of copies and I assume the hope is that by focusing on poetry for a solid month that it might help recognize the importance of poetry, of poets, and get some attention to those wonderful writers. By NO means is the following meant to be anti-poetry, not at all. I too think there should be a National Poetry Month. I just also think we need a National Short Story Month as well.
You know what the Barnes & Noble I was in last night has? A poetry section. Granted, it is stocked mostly with what are considered classic collections, but there are contemporary collections to be found on those shelves too.
You know what the Barnes & Noble I was in last night did not have? It didn't have any of the trio of finalists from the 2011 The Story Prize (Steven Millhauser's We Others: New and Selected Stories, Edith Pearlman's Binocular Vision, nor Don Delillo's The Angel Esmerelda: Nine Stories). It didn't have The Collected Stories of John Cheever, or TC Boyle, or Edith Wharton, or Dorothy Parker, or anybody that I could find, and I looked over the spine of every book from A to Z in the fiction section. While I could find both of Lauren Groff's novels, no Delicate Edible Birds and Other Stories. No Knuckleheads by Jeff Kass even though it won the Gold IPPY Award for best SSC, and is a finalist for the Foreword Book of the Year Award for SSC, and, AND, he's a local author.
If I'm not mistken there were eleven rows of shelves at this particular store, so that's 44 actual bookshelf units with five shelves apiece on each unit. This not counting the approximately 100 new titles of fiction facing out. So books covering approximately 220 shelves and I counted less than ten short story collections. And only two of these held in multiple copies--the two current Discover Great Writers selections (which, admittedly I don't thnk I've ever seen a poetry collection appear on that list).
How can this be when there are publishers like Press 53 concentrating on short story collections, when a publisher cranking out books less than 20 miles away from this particular store, Dzanc Books, publishes at least 2 or 3 collections every year, frequently award-winning collections, when there are at least six or seven big award-winning collections every single year with two Flannery O'Connor Award Winners, the Iowa Short Fiction Award, the John Simmons Award, the Drue Heinz Lit Prize, the Mary McCarthy Prize from Sarabande, as well as awards I'm immediately sorry I started this line with as I know I'm skipping some big ones. They didn't even have Jack Driscoll's The World of a Few Minutes Ago, one of Wayne State University's (Detroit) MADE IN MICHIGAN series titles from a Michigan treasure of an author/teacher.
For this reason alone I think we need a National Short Story Month. At least here on the internet until the rest of the world catches up.
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