Virginia Quarterly Review Archive
The Best Short Story I Read in a Lit Mag This Week: “Nashua” by Sara Majka
A critique often heard in creative writing workshops is that the protagonist of a story is too observational—read: passive—and not enough involved in the action, rendering a story that is either too “quiet” or a protagonist with too little at stake in the outcome of the plot. I think
The Best Short Story I Read in a Lit Mag This Week: “Keller in Effects” by Todd James Pierce
There’s a rich body of art that could be described by that famous quote by Thoreau from Walden, “The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation”—art in particular focusing on the upper class of the 50s and 60s. Think of Richard Yates’ Revolutionary Road, or more recently the