\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n
In 1963, C. Michael Curtis <\/a>dropped out of grad school at Cornell University in order to take a job at The Atlantic<\/a><\/em>.\u00a0 He\u2019s been there ever since.\u00a0<\/p>\n
As the fiction editor at The Atlantic<\/em>, Curtis has discovered or edited some of the finest short story writers of the twentieth- and twenty-first centuries, including Tobias Wolff<\/a>, Joyce Carol Oates<\/a>, John Updike<\/a>, Richard Ford<\/a>, Jill McCorkle<\/a>, and many more.<\/p>\n
Last week, my friend John Jeter<\/a>, the author of The Plunder Room<\/em>, asked me, \u201cWhat is a short story anyway?\u00a0 How does it work?\u00a0 How do you write one?\u201d\u00a0 I figured I could stumble through an answer (which I did, poorly) or I could go right to the source and ask the editor who has helped shape the answer to the question.<\/p>\n
I am fortunate to teach part-time on the same faculty as Curtis at Wofford College<\/a>, and have had the pleasure of co-teaching a class with him based on his anthology God: Stories<\/em>.\u00a0 He is a kind, unassuming, and generous man with one heck of a sense of humor and a fixation with finding the perfect cheeseburger.*<\/p>\n
Below, Curtis and I talked about writing and editing short fiction.<\/p>\n
How does a short story work?<\/p>\n
How do you make a short story better?<\/p>\n
What has been your greatest editing challenge? <\/strong><\/p>\n
Curtis:<\/strong>\u00a0 My greatest editing challenge. \u00a0I can think of three:<\/p>\n
What advice do you have for beginning writers?<\/strong><\/p>\n
*The perfect cheeseburger can be found at The Handlebar <\/a>in Greenville, SC.<\/p>\n
Jeremy L. C. Jones <\/a>is a freelance writer, editor, and part-time professor.\u00a0 Jones is a frequent contributor to <\/em>Clarkesworld Magainze<\/a>.\u00a0 He is also the director of <\/em>Shared Worlds<\/a>, a creative writing and world-building camp that he and <\/em>Jeff VanderMeer <\/a>designed in 2006.<\/em>\u00a0<\/p>\n