PRI: Selected Shorts Podcast

This program is made up of three stories selected and introduced by the eminent Broadway playwright John Patrick Shanley, author of such hits as "DOUBT" and "DEFIANCE." Shanley's literary picks includes Ernest Hemingway's "A Clean, Well-Lighted Place," and "After the Storm," as well as Haruki Murakami's fantasy, "The Little Green Monster." The readers are Ron Cephas Jones, Dana Ivey, and John Turturro. Worth the price of admission is Shanley's rich, robust and poetic introductions. As he says, "Why do storytellers tell stories and why do you listen to them? We might as well ask, "Why do we breath?"

MLB Update - Bentley Men's Basketball - The Rise and Fall of an NFL Prospect - Skiing the Samller Mountains in Colorado - Bill Reads Your Letters - Charlie Pierce - God Save The Fan

This program features two stories about unsettling moments. The first is by the Indian writer Kiran Desai, whose novel THE INHERITANCE OF LOSS won her England's version of the Pulitzer, the Man Booker Prize. "Sermon in the Guava Tree," follows the uneven fortunes of an ordinary man and his disgruntled family when one day he decides to retreat from a disappointing life. The reader is Tazewell Thompson. Our second story, "Crazy Glue," by the provocative Israeli writer Etgar Keret, gives us a look at a bizarre and transformative moment in an emotionally sluggish marriage. This program also features short pieces created by students participating in Symphony Space's adult literacy program ALL WRITE!

This program features Mary Gordon's reflective tale "Storytelling," read by Lindsay Crouse. It is indeed revealing about the craft of writing--its joys and heartaches--and Gordon also took the time to discuss her work with us in a brief interview featured after the story. Our second tale is English novelist V.S. Pritchett's "Just a Little More," in which an aging man reclaims his dignity through his robust accounts of meals he remembers. The reader is Rene Auberjonois.

This program celebrates the remarkable writer Mavis Gallant, a long-time contributor to The New Yorker. In the 1950s Canadian-born Gallant quit a steady journalism job to move to Paris and take a risk on fiction writing, with great success. The tale featured on this program, "Grippes and Poche," chronicles an epic relationship between a wily French novelist and a tax collector. It was published in Gallant's collection Overhead in a Balloon: Twelve Stories of Paris. Gallant reads her own story from the stage at Symphony Space, and the novelist Jhumpa LaHiri pays tribute to Gallant as an inspiration to the current generation of writers.

Hollywood and Broadway star Tony Roberts reads "Initiation," by Joseph Conrad, a gripping tale of a young naval officer's first encounter with maritime disaster and the fickle nature of the sea. The story has all the lush and powerful hallmarks of a work by the author of Heart of Darkness. The second story on the program is a micro-fiction by Robert King. "Country Miles" is a short tale of long journeys, read by Marian Seldes.