Single Scene Short Stories - Softcover

Bishop, Margaret

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1423600622 ISBN 13: 9781423600626

Publisher: Gibbs Smith, Publisher, 2013

Synopsis

A compilation of acclaimed short stories that each take place within a single scene.

About this title

About the Author

Margaret Bishop received a BA from Wesleyan University and an MFA from George Mason University. She lives and writes in northern Virginia.

From the Back Cover

What is a single scene short story? It is a short work of fiction with a specific remarkable quality-the whole of the story takes place in one scene, one geographical coordinate, one window of time. To think of it dramatically, it is a story presented on a stage with no change of setting or costume, no voice-over summarizing or carrying the viewer from here to there. This collection contains some of the best single scene short stories ever written, the modern classics of the form.

Single Scene Short Stories includes the works of such well-known writers as Michael Chabon, Anton Chekhov, Raymond Carver, Mary Gaitskill, Ernest Hemingway, James Joyce, Guy de Maupassant, Joyce Carol Oates, Flannery O'Connor, Dorothy Parker, Katherine Anne Porter, John Updike, William Carlos Williams, Tobias Wolff, and many others. These stories will rivet you, move you, and unfold in you an awakening and recognition of what it is to be human. With the barest allowable back story-just a thin line here or there to locate you to the character or situation-these stories give us in a brief glimpse all the best that fiction has to offer.

Margaret Bishop received a BA from Wesleyan University and an MFA from George Mason University. She lives and writes in northern Virginia. Single Scene Short Stories is her first book.

From the Inside Flap

What is a single scene short story? It is a short work of fiction with a specific remarkable quality-the whole of the story takes place in one scene, one geographical coordinate, one window of time. To think of it dramatically, it is a story presented on a stage with no change of setting or costume, no voice-over summarizing or carrying the viewer from here to there. This collection contains some of the best single scene short stories ever written, the modern classics of the form.

Single Scene Short Stories includes the works of such well-known writers as Michael Chabon, Anton Chekhov, Raymond Carver, Mary Gaitskill, Ernest Hemingway, James Joyce, Guy de Maupassant, Joyce Carol Oates, Flannery O'Connor, Dorothy Parker, Katherine Anne Porter, John Updike, William Carlos Williams, Tobias Wolff, and many others. These stories will rivet you, move you, and unfold in you an awakening and recognition of what it is to be human. With the barest allowable back story-just a thin line here or there to locate you to the character or situation-these stories give us in a brief glimpse all the best that fiction has to offer.

Margaret Bishop received a BA from Wesleyan University and an MFA from George Mason University. She lives and writes in northern Virginia. Single Scene Short Stories is her first book.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

When writing poetry in form, the accepted rule is that a poet can deviate from the strictures of the form a time or two, and such departures enhance the poem’s power. An extra foot, an off-rhyme, maybe a double envoi at the end of a sonnet, all have the potential to lift the poem off the page, to transport the reader beyond himself. Similarly, a few allowances in what constitutes a single scene has enabled this collection to be more exemplar than example. A tighter form allows the writer to express emotions—conflict, dissonance, fear, or love—that could be overwhelming or trite given too much

A title form allows the writer to express emotions-conflicts, dissonance, fear, or love-that could be overwhelming or trite given to much free-form space. Perhaps that is why so many of these stories are about disturbed relationships or moments right before the end of life. Love and death and making a scene. The single scene story allows these experiences to go directly into our hearts where they enrich and inform our own awareness of being in this world.

Edition details

• Publisher: Gibbs Smith, Publisher
• Publication date: 2013
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1423600622
• ISBN 13: 9781423600626
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 256