The Tiny Book of Tiny Stories

This aptly named teensy tome, edited by actor Joseph Gordon-Levitt, with help from his online creative collective, hitRECord, is packed with illustrated stories so short they can often be read in a single breath. Some of the stories and pictures in this slender volume are worthy of longer contemplation and repeat reading. Others are good for a chuckle. All of them push the boundaries of what we think of as short fiction.

May 21: The musical smash hit Gypsy opened on Broadway on this day in 1959. The bestseller upon which the show is based, Gypsy Rose Lee's memoir Gypsy, told her life as a rags-to-naked success story, and added to…

Ethan Rutherford and Matt Burgess (Dogfight: A Love Story) on the writing of Rutherford's surreal and fiercely funny story collection The Peripatetic Coffin

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