In her short story "The Heart of Things," Kristina Gorcheva Newberry explores the fraught relationship between three women: a mother and her two adult daughters. Carmen, the younger daughter, has been living in the U.S. for 17 years, while her mother and Leezy, her sister, have remained at home in the Soviet Union. It's not easy to say what this story is about, though certainly it concerns the distance, both psychological and cultural, between the thoroughly Americanized and socially liberal Carmen, and her traditional and socially conservative Russian mother and sister. But as much as it's about their differences, it's also about their connection--and that, for me, is where the magic of the story resides. 

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Ed Falco reading "Among the Tootalonians," a story that's set in 2001, in the anxious days and weeks after the 9-11 terrorist attack in New York. Val, the central character in the story, is living in Boise, Idaho, where his young wife has recently left him to pursue a relationship with a locally famous artist. Val, as he wil tell you, is not in a good place.

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Ed Falco begins Season 2 of Ed Falco on the Air by reading his short story, "Acid," the title story of his 1996 collection from The University of Notre Dame Press. The collection was published as winner of The Richard Sullivan Prize. "Acid" was originally published in TriQuarterly, and included in his new and selected stories, Sabbath Night in the Church of the Piranha, from Unbridled Books.

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Send us Fan Mail

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Send us Fan Mail

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Send us Fan Mail

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Send us Fan Mail

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