How to Read a Short Story

Anyone can do it, of course. You just have to get to the last page. But how can you read a story artfully? How can you read for literary experience, for aesthetic sensation, for craft, structure, character, and deep meaning? In these three seminars, novelist, poet, and professor Kevin Prufer will guide us through short stories by Flannery O’Connor, Z. Z. Packer, Michael Cunningham, Raymond Carver and others in search not only of story, but of artistic experience, literary complexity, and something like truth.

November 4: In the first session, “Metaphor, Symbol and Big Ideas”, we will discuss Flannery O’Connor’s “A Good Man Is Hard to Find” read alongside Raymond Carver’s “Popular Mechanics”.

November 11: The second session, “Landscape and Perspective” will feature Michael Cunningham’s “White Angel” read alongside Elizabeth Tallent’s “No One’s a Mystery”.

November 18: The final session, “Trustworthiness and Social Ills” will focus on Z.Z. Packer’s “Brownies” read alongside Carolyn Forché’s “The Colonel”.

Kevin Prufer is the author of ten books, most recently Sleepaway: A Novel (Acre Books, 2024) and The Fears: Poems (Copper Canyon Press, 2023), winner of the 2024 Rilke Prize for American Poetry. He is a professor in the Creative Writing Program at the University of Houston.