A Special Treat

A very new story, from a great contemporary writer.

By the time you read this, I’ll be en route to Syracuse, where I’m doing an intensive series of workshops over the weekend with my brilliant third-year group. And from there, it’s on to New York, the first stop on the tour.

But I’ve got a special treat for us to work on together over the next few sessions.

Last year I was doing a Zoom event for the Penguin Book of the Modern American Short Story, edited by John Freeman, and one of my co-panelists was Manuel Muñoz. His story, “Anyone Can Do It” was featured in the anthology and I fell in love with it, and thought to ask Manuel and his editor at Graywolf Press, Ethan Nosowsky, if they might allow us to discuss it here at Story Club, and they very kindly agreed. Not only that, but Manuel has agreed to take some of your questions.

Manuel Muñoz

This is particularly exciting because “Anyone Can Do It” appears in Manuel’s new collection, The Consequences, out next week.

So: here’s “Anyone Can Do It,”courtesy of Zyzzyva magazine, where the story originally appeared.

I’ll suppress the comments for this post, to give us time to read it. Then I’ll have some first thoughts on Sunday.

If you have questions for Manuel to consider, please send them to me at storyclubwithgeorge@gmail.com. If you would, in the subject line, put “For Manuel Muñoz,” so I can find them more easily.

And thanks, as always, for being here.