Famous Short Story

Budding and experienced Geneva writers can once again share their original work through the Geneva Write Now short story contest. The Geneva Cultural Arts Commission's second annual contest is open to adults and students in middle school and high school. There is no specific theme, but mentioning Geneva in the storyline is required. Family-friendly fiction or creative nonfiction stories with a maximum 1,200 words will be accepted, officials said. Writers can submit entries through 4:30 p.m. Feb. 28 on the city's website at www.geneva.il.us or can mail a typed hard copy to City of Geneva, Cultural Arts Commission, 22 S. First St., Geneva, IL 60134. The Cultural Arts Commission will review the submissions, and a panel of local literary experts will choose the winners in late March, officials said. [Most read] Daily horoscope for January 30, 2022 » The contest is limited to the first 100 entries received. Geneva Chamber of Commerce gift certi...

"I was really disappointed when I read 'Slaughterhouse-Five,'" says Tom McCarthy, the author of "The Making of Incarnation" and other novels. "But then I read his 'Mother Night,' and thought it was brilliant." What books are on your night stand? "Critique of Fantasy," by Laurence Rickels; "The Superrationals," by Stephanie LaCava; "The Encyclopedia of Surfing," by Matt Warshaw. What's the last great book you read? I'm taken by Deleuze and Guattari's notion of "minor" literature: According to them, the real measure of literary merit is not greatness but the opposite, minor-ness. By this they mean that, rather than aspire to the status of towering cultural monuments, books should unravel and deconstruct the language of a culture, send it tunneling down corridors and vectors where it frays and vanishes — and, in this very vanishing, make visible "the revolutionary conditions for every li...

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Stitcher | How to Listen Throughout each year, we hear from many of you, and are always glad when we do. From time to time, we try to answer some of your questions on the podcast. This week, for the second time, we dedicate an entire episode to doing just that. Some of the many questions addressed this week: Who are literature's one-hit wonders? What are some of our favorite biographies? What are empowering novels about women in midlife? How do we assign books to reviewers? Who are writers that deserve more attention? How does the practice of discounted books work? Providing the answers are the book critic Dwight Garner, the editors Lauren Christensen, MJ Franklin and John Williams, and the reporters Alexandra Alter and Elizabeth Harris. Pamela Paul is the host. We mention many more books than usual on this episode. Here's a list for reference: "A Confederacy of Dunces," by John Kennedy Toole "Gilead," by M...

If you're like me, nothing exhilarates you like the feeling of a clean reading tracker, a shelf full of new books, and a new reading goal. Each January, I eagerly scan my TBR, deciding what first page will best start my new year. Which story will give me the push I need to embrace the opportunities ahead? I've found that the best way to start my annual reading goal with a bang is by beginning with short, fast-paced books. I'm bound to finish any book quickly if I can't put it down and it comes in at 300 pages or less. And getting ahead of schedule on my reading tracker gives me all the confidence I need to ride the reading wave through December. That's why I've created this list of 10 short, fast-paced books to help you kickstart your 2022 reading goal. A helpful resource for meeting any kind of reading goal is using a reading tracker. It's a great way to make note of each book you read and make sure you're keeping pace. But reading trackers also o...

When I was 12 or 13 years old, I was not prepared for the racism, the brutality or the sexual assault in Larry Heinemann's 1974 novel, "Close Quarters." Mr. Heinemann, a combat veteran of the war in Vietnam, wrote about a nice, average American man who goes to war and becomes a remorseless killer. In the book's climax, the protagonist and other nice, average American soldiers gang-rape a Vietnamese prostitute they call Claymore Face. As a Vietnamese American teenager, it was horrifying for me to realize that this was how some Americans saw Vietnamese people — and therefore me. I returned the book to the library, hating both it and Mr. Heinemann. Here's what I didn't do: I didn't complain to the library or petition the librarians to take the book off the shelves. Nor did my parents. It didn't cross my mind that we should ban "Close Quarters" or any of the many other books, movies and TV shows in which racist and sexist depictions of Vietnamese...

Reading Time: 4 minutes By Pauline Nasri After the switch to online learning due to the COVID-19 pandemic, some English as an Additional Language (EAL) students and instructors at Ryerson say they're eager to be back in-person since it will help improve their English language learning. Learning a new language online has proven to bring challenges because instructors have had to compensate for the limited opportunities for in-person engagement that typically played an important role for EAL students. When Farah Aldabbagh, a second-year chemical engineering student, arrived in Canada from Dubai in 2019, she had to take various English language proficiency tests in addition to an online EAL course at Ryerson to meet her course requirements.  Aldabbagh said she thinks online learning did not help improve her English since she wasn't interacting with her peers and professors. Aldabbagh added that having to communicate through a screen mad...

Sports Illustrated senior writer Chris Herring's spirited debut, Blood in the Garden , is a thrilling deep dive into the New York Knicks teams of the 1990s. Under the guidance of coaches Pat Riley and Jeff Van Gundy—and players including Patrick Ewing, Charles Oakley, and Anthony Mason—the Knicks made the playoffs routinely, and the finals twice, nearly capturing their first title since 1973. Herring skillfully evokes the intensity and tension of the NBA, and delivers humanizing portraits of Ewing, who faced horrific racist taunts before entering the pros; Riley, a strict martinet who survived a difficult childhood; and Van Gundy, who risked his own safety to protect his players during a brawl with the Miami Heat. Hoops fans are blessed to have no shortage of good reading on the sport. At one point or another, most of these stories focus on strategies and sheer on-court passion. But at their best, the most engrossing basketball books reveal more than that, giving us a deeper window...

In the customer service industry, your accent dictates many aspects of your job. It shouldn't be the case that there's a "better" or "worse" accent, but in today's global economy (though who knows about tomorrow's) it's valuable to sound American or British. While many undergo accent neutralization training, Sanas is a startup with another approach (and a $5.5 million seed round): using speech recognition and synthesis to change the speaker's accent in near real time. The company has trained a machine learning algorithm to quickly and locally (that is, without using the cloud) recognize a person's speech on one end and, on the other, output the same words with an accent chosen from a list or automatically detected from the other person's speech. Image Credits: Sanas.ai It slots right into the OS's sound stack so it works out of the box with pretty much any audio or video calling tool. Right now the company is operating a pi...

I t's one thing to read a book and be inspired by its contents. It's another to see and hear the author talk about the writing process and their inspirations for their stories. That's where the Deschutes Public Library Foundation's Author! Author! series comes in—inviting authors who have graced best-seller lists, won Pulitzer Prizes and more to share their insights with Central Oregon audiences. This year, like every year since the Author! Author! series began in 2012, big-name authors are introducing themselves to Central Oregonians. click to enlarge Deschutes Public Library Foundation ...

Bossy. is a Melbourne-based copywriting studio that specialises in tone of voice development, website copy, digital content, social copy and anything else with words in it. When we're not writing copy, we can be found chatting over at The Bossy. Type podcast, and teaching our course, Bossy. Copy College.  We're also home to the Bossy. Supergroup, which is really just a fun way of saying that we're a team of freelance strategists, writers and editors — each with an individual writing style, a certain copywriting skill or specialty, or loads of experience within a particular industry.  But while the majority of our writers work freelance, our Director + Head Writer Alyce is quickly realising that another in-house copywriter would be very handy. And here we are.  WHAT WE NEED: We're looking for an experienced, talented, all-rounder creative copywriter to join Alyce (Director + Head Writer), Asheda (Studio Manager + Copywriter) and Anna (C...

Ray Walsh  |  For the Lansing State Journal "The Dark Hours" by bestselling author Michael Connelly is his latest tough and tight police procedural crime novel. This isn't a happy, cheery tale with no bloodshed and a happy-tail wagging puppy. Well - OK - the puppy is there, but violence abounds as hardworking LAPD Detective Renee Ballard gets involved in two distinctively different cases. Ballard and her partner, Lisa Moore, who works out of the Hollywood Sexual Crimes Unit, are employed with the rest of the department members, covering the reigning chaos and confusion of the New Year's Eve celebration in the streets of Los Angeles. They are called to the scene of a neighborhood block party, where the owner of a successful auto repair shop may have been killed by a random bullet fired up in the air. But it doesn't feel right - Ballard thinks otherwise; it may be related to an earlier case handled by retired LAPD Detective Harry Bosch. Ballard i...

Black Clover Chapter 320 raw scans and spoilers have come out, and they seem poised to continue the excitement that the Spade Kingdom Raid arc has brought thus far. The unexpected introduction of Lucifero has definitely thrown doubt upon the fates and futures of the series' core cast. Warning: This article contains spoilers and reflects the writer's opinions. Black Clover Chapter 320 does offer a light at the end of the tunnel, however, with Yuno's appearance. Now in possession of two Grimoires rather than one, it would seem as though Yuno is ready to stand up against Lucifero with his newfound power. Yet the question is, will Yuno's second Grimoire matter against Lucifero in Black Clover Chapter 320 and beyond? Black Clover Chapter 320 teases Yuno vs. Lucifero matchup for the future Will Yuno's second Grimoire matter against Lucifero? Ain't no way holy fuck! All people asking for consequences gotta be shutting the fu...