Selected Shorts

Host Meg Wolitzer presents two works that reassess and redefine our ideas of “the West.” It’s both a landscape of awesome beauty, and the scene of cultural appropriation, and we’ve got two masters sharing and shaping our experience. In Louise Erdrich’s “The Hollow Children” a natural disaster tests family ties. It’s read by Tate Donovan. And writer and environmental activist Rick Bass stress tests the West, and his main character, in “Fires,” read by John Benjamin Hickey. We also reprise part of an interview with Louise Erdrich from earlier in the year. In it, she mentions a new novel in progress, which has now been published: The Mighty Red: A Novel.

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Meg Wolitzer presents two stories that combine different sorts of unknowables: unidentified—or hard to identify—flying objects, and romantic love. In “The Duck,” by Ben Loory, a heartsick mallard has chosen a really unattainable object of affection. The reader, at the Mahaiwe Performing Arts Center in Great Barrington, was Sonia Manzano. And an early Haruki Murakami story, “U.F.O. in Kushiro,” sends a jilted husband on a journey of self-discovery. The reader, at The Japan Society, was Javier Munoz.

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Meg Wolitzer presents two favorite Selected Shorts works in which food and nourishment figure both literally and symbolically. The narrator of Haruki Murakami’s “The Year of Spaghetti” seems to be just sharing pasta recipes, but it’s the recipe for assuaging loneliness that may elude him. The reader is Sopranos alum Michael Imperioli. And unusual family dynamics shape Amy Bloom’s “Love is Not a Pie,” performed by Hope Davis. We also share a discussion of this work by the mother and daughter book club organized by our frequent reader Rita Wolf and her daughter Anjeli.

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Host Meg Wolitzer presents two works about love and marriage. In Amy Silverberg’s “Have You Met Husband?” two men and a dog vie for this title. The reader is Molly Bernard. And Mary Gordon’s “The Magician’s Wife” is a touching portrait of life-long devotion—a kind of magic itself. The reader is Jane Curtin.

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Host Meg Wolitzer presents the podcast What Could Go Right, by the Progress Network. It’s a current affairs show that tries to find a more balanced way of looking at what’s happening in the world. We hope you enjoy it as much as we do.