Andrew Porter is the author of the short story collection The Theory of Light and Matter, which won the Flannery O’Connor Award for Short Fiction, the novel In Between Days, which was a Barnes & Noble “Discover Great New Writers” selection and an IndieBound “Indie Next” selection, and the short story collection The Disappeared, which was published in April 2023.

Andrew’s short stories have appeared in One Story, Ploughshares, The Southern Review, The Threepenny Review, and Prairie Schooner, among others. He has had his work read on NPR’s Selected Shorts and twice selected as one of the Distinguished Stories of the Year by Best American Short Stories. A graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, Andrew is currently a Professor of English and Director of the Creative Writing Program at Trinity University in San Antonio.

Andrew joins Marrie Stone to talk about The Disappeared. He talks about the state of the short story in contemporary fiction (with references to Rebecca Makkai’s article about why we should be reading short stories), and what short stories can do for readers that novels cannot. He shares insights from his former professor, Marilynne Robinson, about endings. He talks about how he approaches flash fiction. He discusses why three is such a magical number of characters for a story, and much more.

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(Recorded on June 13, 2023) 

Host: Barbara DeMarco-Barrett
Co-Host: Marrie Stone
Music and sound editing: Travis Barrett