Hi Everyone,
I am so excited to share this episode of Let’s Deconstruct a Story with you. Deb Olin Unferth and I had a great time.
Imagine if you could tell when people were going to die!
We discussed her Harper’s Magazine story, “Wait Till You See Me Dance,” which includes several autobiographical elements, including a period in her life when she genuinely believed she could tell when someone was “not long for this world” just by looking at them.
The story is so good—and if you happen to be adjuncting this fall, you may relate to it as well. One of my favorite lines:
I was what is called an adjunct: a thing attached to another thing in a dependent or subordinate position.
This is also the titular story from her 2017 collection, published by Graywolf.
Deb Olin Unferth is the author of six books, including the novels Barn 8 and Vacation, the memoir Revolution, finalist for the National Book Critics’ Circle Award, two story collections, and the graphic novel I, Parrot. Her fiction and essays have appeared in over fifty magazines and journals, including Harper’s, the New York Times, The Paris Review, Granta, and McSweeney’s. She has received a Guggenheim fellowship, three Pushcart Prizes, a Creative Capital Fellowship for Innovative Literature, fellowships from the MacDowell, Yaddo, and Ucross residencies.
She’s a professor at the University of Texas at Austin, where she teaches for the Michener Center, the New Writers’ Project, and she also directs the Pen City Writers, the prison creative-writing program at a south Texas penitentiary. Originally from Chicago, she lives in Austin with the philosophy professor Matt Evans.
Our next podcast episode, featuring Katherine Damm, will drop on November 1st for everyone. However, it will not include the Q&A, writing prompts, and discussion. Those are for paid subscribers, so if you would like to participate in the discussion/workshop, please subscribe.
(Thanks so much to audio engineer Elliot Bancel for his work on this episode!)
Also, please note our other upcoming discussions and links to the stories below.
On October 5th at 11 am (EST), Katherine Damm will join me to discuss her Best American Short Story, The Happiest Day of Your Life from The Iowa Review. The recording will be free and available to everyone.
Paid subscribers are welcome to join us for the interview. During the second hour, I will offer prompts and continue the discussion of the story after Katherine Damm leaves. Please find the link below!
Bio: Katherine Damm’s short stories have appeared in Ploughshares, The Iowa Review, New England Review, and The Best American Short Stories 2024. She received her M.F.A. from the Programs in Writing at the University of California, Irvine, where she taught in the English department and co-edited the literary magazine, Faultline. She graduated with an A.B. in Literature from Harvard College, where she wrote for the Lampoon and the Harvard Advocate. Originally from Philadelphia, she currently lives in New York with her family and her poodle and is an Assistant Professor of Creative Writing at Marymount Manhattan College. She is working on a novel.
On October 14th at noon (EST), I’ll be talking to Susan Shepherd about her Kenyon Review story, “Baboons.” “Baboons” is a 2024 Best American Short Story selection chosen by Lauren Groff.
The podcast episode will be released on November 1st and will be available on Spotify, Apple, and other platforms.
Susan Shepherd’s writing has been published in the Boston Globe, Ploughshares, Story Magazine, the Chicago Quarterly, the Kenyon Review, One Story Magazine, Swamp Pink, Best American Short Stories 2024, and is forthcoming in the Harvard Review.
Her story “Goats’”(Ploughshares), was a distinguished story in Best American Short Stories 2021, edited by Jesmyn Ward, and “Snakes’”(Chicago Quarterly) was a distinguished story in Best American Short Stories 2023, edited by Min Jin Lee.
Her work as a producer and reporter has aired on multiple National Public Radio shows, including Living on Earth and Marketplace.
Her show, 11 Central Ave, a radio comic strip, aired on select NPR stations on Morning Edition around the country. 11 Central Ave won a Gold Medal for ‘Best Comedy’ from the New York Festivals, and a National Gracie Allen Award for ‘Best Producer, Comedy’.
The podcast episode will be released on December 1st and will be available on Spotify, Apple, and other platforms.
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On October 28th at 10:30 am, Maura Stanton and I will talk about “School for Robots,” winner of The Ghost Story Supernatural Fiction Award.
Maura Stanton’s supernatural robot stories have appeared in Allium, Pacifica Literary Review, Baltimore Review, Beloit Fiction Journal, The Phoenix, and North American Review. Her chapbook, Interiors, won the Open Chapbook contest and was published by Finishing Line Press. With “School for Robots,” she is now a two-time winner of The Ghost Story Supernatural Fiction Award. She also won the Fall 2015 Supernatural Fiction Award for her story, “House Ghosts.” Here’s more about Maura Stanton on her Wikipedia page.
The podcast episode will be released on January 1st and will be available on Spotify, Apple, and other platforms.
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On November 14th at 1 pm, Shastri Akella and I will discuss his story, “The Magic Bangle,” first published in The Fairy Tale Review and later chosen by Lauren Groff as a 2024 Best American Short Story selection.
Shastri Akella’s debut novel “The Sea Elephants” has been published by Flatiron Books (USA, Canada) and Penguin (India). He was a writing resident at the Fine Arts Works Center (2021) and the Oak Springs Garden Foundation (2023). He’s winner of 2022 FracturedLit Flash Fiction Contest and the 2023 Best Microfiction Contest. His writing has appeared in Guernica, Fairy Tale Review, CRAFT, The Masters Review, Electric Literature, World Literature Review, The Rumpus, and elsewhere. He earned an MFA in Creative Writing and PhD. in Comparative Literature at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. He’s an Assistant Professor of Creative Writing at Michigan State University. Contact him for readings and book signings at your bookstore, college or library.
The podcast episode will be released on February 1st and will be available on Spotify, Apple, and other platforms.
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On January 14th at noon (EST), I’ll discuss “Daughtered Out,” by Toni Ann Johnson, first published in The Coachella Review. This story is included in Johnson’s collection, But Where’s Home?, which will be published on February 10, 2026, by Screen Door Press, a new imprint of The University Press of Kentucky. This is Johnson’s second collection, featuring characters from her STELLAR first collection, Light Skin Gone to Waste.
You can find my first interview with her about that book here.
Toni Ann Johnson is the winner of the Flannery O’Connor Award for Short Fiction. Her short story collection Light Skin Gone to Waste was published by the University of Georgia Press in the fall of 2022. She is also an accomplished novelist, screenwriter, and playwright. Having grown up in Monroe, New York, in one of the first Black families to live there, many of Johnson’s short stories reflect her experience as a person of color. Johnson’s essays and short fiction have appeared in the Los Angeles Times, the Emerson Review, Xavier Review, and many other publications. Her first novel, Remedy for a Broken Angel, was nominated for a 2015 NAACP Image Award. Her novella Homecoming won Accents Publishing’s novella contest and was published in May 2021. Johnson has won the Humanitas Prize and the Christopher Award for her screenplay of the ABC film Ruby Bridges, as well as a second Humanitas Prize for Crown Heights, which aired on Showtime Television. She also co-wrote the popular dance movie Step Up 2: The Streets. Johnson has been a Sundance Screenwriter’s Lab Fellow, A Callaloo Writer’s Workshop Fellow (2016), and she’s received support for her writing from The Hurston/Wright Foundation, The Prague Summer Program for Writers, and the One Story Summer Conference.
The podcast episode will be released on March 1st and will be available on Spotify, Apple, and other platforms.
On February 17th, Pemi Aguda will visit to discuss her Granta story, “Manifest.” Timing and Zoom link to come!
’Pemi Aguda is from Lagos, Nigeria. She has an MFA from the Helen Zell Writers’ Program at the University of Michigan.
Her short stories have won O. Henry Prizes, a Nommo Award for Short Story, a Henfield Prize, and the Writivism Prize. Her work has been supported by an Octavia Butler Memorial Scholarship, and her novel-in-progress won the 2020 Deborah Rogers Foundation Writers Award. She was a 2021 Fiction Fellow with the Miami Book Fair, a 2022 MacDowell fellow, and is the current Hortense Spillers Assistant Editor at Transition Magazine. Ghostroots, her debut story collection, was a finalist for the 2024 National Book Awards in Fiction and the PEN/Faulkner Award.
W. W. Norton, Virago, and Masobe published Ghostroots in 2024, and will publish her novel, One Leg on Earth, in 2026.
Paid subscribers, please find Zoom links to Katherine Damm and Susan Shepherd, as well as my notes on Deb Olin Unferth’s story below.
As always, send me your story ideas!
Cheers,
Kelly
