PRI: Selected Shorts (Stories)

This program includes two stories featuring improbable events. The first, Joyce Johnson’s “The Fall of Texas” chronicles a pivotal moment in the 1960s, when both the terrestrial world and the personal life of the heroine seemed about to collapse. “Sex in the City” star Cynthia Nixon reads. Next, in Percival Everett’s “The Fix,” read by host Isaiah Sheffer, the story’s central character can fix anything—anything: toasters, heartaches, lives. Who is he?

In Krista MacGruder’s “Not Quite Home Alone,” a solitary woman is surprised by an intruder. The reader is Jacqueline Kim. In the second story, Miranda July’s “The Shared Patio,” a woman takes her right to share a patio with her neighbors to extremes. The reader is Kirsten Vangsness. A hypochondriac beholds a monster in Poe’s “The Sphinx,” read by Kathleen Widdoes. Finally, in Richard Ford’s “Privacy,” a novelist becomes obsessed with watching a neighbor. The reader is Ren Auberjonois.

Each of the three works on this program, by masters Tennessee Williams, Edna O’Brien, and Flannery O’Connor, offers us intense and provocative close-ups of its main characters. First, “Life Story,” a short prose poem about pillow talk by a very young Williams, read by Mia Dillon. Sex is the theme of the second work as well: in Edna O’Brien’s inner monologue, “Violets,” a woman waits for a potential lover. The reader is Fionnula Flanagan. Finally, Flannery O’Connor’s “The Life You Save May Be...

A lot of people listen to SELECTED SHORTS in their cars. In this program, the characters are in their cars—running from a bad love affair in the first piece, and toward a natural disaster in the second. “Fruit and Words,” Aimee Bender’s fantastical account of a woman who finds an unusual fruit stand is read by Rita Wolf. Next, SHORTS host Isaiah Sheffer reads T.C. Boyle’s powerful “La Conchita,” in which a man gunning his car up the Pacific Coast Highway on an emergency medical mission...

This program includes four pieces exploring the ideas of time, place, and identity, beginning with SHORTS host Isaiah Sheffer’s reading of Jonathan Safran Foer’s “Why I’m Not Where You Are, 5/21/63.” Next, playwright Will Eno interviews himself, and actor James Braly tells us about trying to assert his manhood during a New York City blackout. Finally, in William Maxwell’s “All the Days and Nights,” read by Tony Roberts, a man tries to recover his own past.

A program devoted to “growing up fast.” In Tobias Wolff’s “Smorgasbord,” two prep school boys lose their innocence in more way than one. The reader is Rene Auberjonois. Elizabeth Crane’s “Football” starts with the image of a homecoming weekend, and accelerates right through one woman’s imagined next life. Steppenwolf artistic director Martha Lavey reads.

The protean Miranda July—writer, filmmaker, and visual and performance artist—interviewed people selling prized possessions in a local PennySaver, for her book It Chooses You, and gives us a glimpse of their souls. Excerpts were re-enacted for a special Symphony Space performance.

What if your heart is broken and your only guide is Dante? This is the premise of Allegra Goodman’s bittersweet “La Vita Nuova,” read by Marin Ireland. And the family fish knows all in David Means’ “The Secret Goldfish,” read by Charles Keating.

This program begins with a classic by the godfather of modern American short stories, Raymond Carver, the much anthologized “What We Talk About When We Talk About Love,” in which two hard-drinking couples review their lives and loves. The reader is Leonard Nimoy. Dorothy Thomas is an early 20th century writer. Her charming story “The Getaway,” about an overwhelmed mom trying to have fling, despite her tenacious son, was first published in The New Yorker. The reader is Mia Dillon.

A Russian troika—humor, tragedy, and magic are featured in three stories. In Isaac Babel’s “My First Goose” an intellectual Jewish soldier has to prove his barbarism to be accepted by his troop. In Anton Chekhov’s “Rothschild’s Fiddle,” a miserable personality rediscovers his humanity, and in between, Ludmilla Petrushevskaya has created a strange fairy tale in which three lost souls become a family. The readers are Joe Morton, Denis O’Hare, and Nina Arianda.

James Joyce’s classic story, “The Dead”, takes place at a New Year’s dinner-dance in Dublin in 1904. It is filled with colorful personalities, and is a glimpse of a bygone era. At the same time, it centers on the precarious marriage of the central character, Gabriel Conroy, and his wife, Gretta. This program features Part 1 of this story, and includes period music. The readers are Rene Auberjonois, Fionnula Flanagan and Isaiah Sheffer.

The prolific and multi-talented fantasy writer Neil Gaiman reads his modern fairy tale “Troll Bridge” and Broadway star Boyd Gaines performs a mystical tale by Jorge Luis Borges, “The Circular Ruins.” And the SELECTED SHORTS contest-winning story "Tender," by Carly Sachs, is read by Mary Brienza.

The poet Mark Strand ventures into short fiction with “More Life,” a touching and funny piece in which a man’s late father, a failed novelist, begins to haunt him in various guises. SHORTS host Isaiah Sheffer is the reader. Then, the children of an incorrigible hippie deal with the consequences of his feckless ways in Maxine Swan’s “Creeping.” The reader is Broadway star Christine Ebersole.

In David Schickler’s tender but comic, “Jamaica,” an impetuous move traps the man of the house in his banister on the night of his wife’s book club meeting, and he learns more than he bargained for about life and love. SHORTS host Isaiah Sheffer reads. Ron Carlson’s anthology Plan B for the Middle Class, is the source of the whimsical tale, “On the U.S.S. Fortitude,” where a single mom muses on deck while waiting for her kids to come home on their cruise missiles. Laura Esterman reads.

The story that started it all for “Bright Lights, Big City” author Jay McInerney. “It’s Six A.M., Do You Know Where You Are?,” is performed by Jeremy Shamos. And Montana-born Mailie Meloy conjures the beauty of her home state for her father/daughter story “Red from Green,” performed by Patricia Kalember.