With National Poetry Month officially wrapped up, Dan
Wickett of the Emerging Writers Network has declared May “Short Story Month.”
Wickett, who also serves as executive director and publisher of Dzanc Books,
plans to select three stories—one from a published collection, one from a print
periodical, and one from an online journal—to read and blog about each day. If
all goes well, he will have covered just shy of one hundred pieces by month’s
end.
The concept has some history behind it. The Emerging Writers
Network kicked off its first Short Story Month in 2007, and Larry Dark,
director of The Story Prize, floated the idea even earlier. “I think the story
needs advocacy as a cultural institution the way poetry has done,” Dark told The Pennsylvania Gazette in 2003. “There’s
a national poetry month, and I think there should be a national short-story
month, too. It’s a very American form. From Hawthorne and Poe to Hemingway,
Fitzgerald, and Faulkner, almost every great American writer has done the short
story, and there are some great writers, like Flannery O’Connor, who
practically only wrote short stories. Funding for the arts has been cut, but
there’s a lot of activity around the short story, and I think it could be
promoted and brought to people’s attention a little better.”
The Academy
of American Poets
launched National Poetry Month in 1996. Since then the nonprofit organization
has enlisted a variety of government agencies and officials, educational
leaders, publishers, sponsors, poets, and arts organizations to help with the
festivities each year. Dark stressed last month that any corresponding
initiative for short fiction would need a similar level of support. “For [National
Short Story Month] to come about and have any impact,” he wrote on the official
blog of The Story Prize, “it will need to have a strong organization behind it,
a real concerted and nationally coordinated effort, and buy-in from bookstores,
schools, and libraries, not to mention authors and publishers.”
To generate momentum for Short Story Month, the Emerging
Writers Network blog will also feature guest commentary throughout May from
writers and editors discussing exemplary stories and collections.
For more information, visit the Emerging Writers Network Web
site and The Story Prize blog.
