"Enemies"

by Anton Chekhov

So, as of today, I’d like to revert back to our usual schedule: Office Hours for all subscribers on Thursdays, and, on Sundays, work on published stories.

As we get back to our work on stories, I want to try to broaden our field of vision in two ways: first, by reading more contemporary work, and second, by reading more internationally. As I’ve mentioned here before, reading contemporary work offers some challenges in obtaining permissions, but I’m working on some ideas - bear with me.

In addition, in a future post, I’ll also ask all of you for some recommendations on international short story masters - I’m finding I’m not as well-read in this area as I wish I was.

But, for today: let’s ease back into our story work by going back to a (Russian!) classic that has haunted me from the first time I read it - both for technical reasons and because of what it says about us as human beings.