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In this episode Series Editor Nicole Lamy and featured author Jessica Treadway talk about the Best American Short Stories Anthology 2025. The episode covers:

Trends among the stories

Who reads the anthology in 2026 and how representation may show up differently

How to define a contemporary short story

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In this episode Pat Lipsky talks about her acclaimed new memoir Brightening Glance and covers:

What having a space means as an artist and the discipline necessary to endure

Her life in the New York City art scene from 1960s to present day, including accounts of experiences with Tony Smith and Pierre Rosenberg

The role Marcel Proust has played in her life and work

And the experience of entering the publishing world from the perspective of a seasoned painter

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In this episode Marguerite Sheffer talks about Iowa Short Fiction Prize winning collection The Man in the Banana Trees and covers:

the content of Marguerite's wide ranging speculative fiction stories that dive deeply into the practice of making art and some of our most critical justice issues in our culture

how design thinking helped Marguerite get to a place of wildness and fierce play and pleasure with these stories

what it was like to win the 2024 Iowa Short Fiction Prize and how it has changed her professional life

how writing groups and community played a role in completing this collection

what experimentation and sense of creative destruction can lead to in a creative practice