EWN has proclaimed May to be Short Story Month. As I always have at least one book of short stories open somewhere around the house, I’ll try to mention several of them over the next couple of weeks:

The Woman in the Woods: a collection of linked stories by Ann Joslin Williams, winner of the 2005 Spokane Prize, published by Eastern Washington University Press. Just this morning I read the first story, “Cold-Fire,” a quiet and passionate story that is beautifully aware of its surroundings. Ann has just left California College of the Arts, where she was MFA program director for two years, to take the position at University of New Hampshire which has been vacated by Alexander Parsons (check out his story collection, Thunderbird)–who has taken a fiction position at the University of Houston.

Also: Logorrhea:Good Words Make Good Stories, edited by John Klima. Just received my contributor copy yesterday. This is an anthology of short stories inspired by winning spelling bee words. My story, “Home Scar,” is inspired by the words logorrhea and squamulose. Jeff Vandermeer constructs a story around appoggiatura, Hal Duncan takes on chiaroscurist, and Anna Tambour ponders pococurante.