For both readers and writers, a short story can be the perfect portal to another world. In just a few pages, you meet unforgettable characters, journey through exciting new settings and see the familiar in a new way.
Join us in celebrating Short Story Month on Saturday, May 17, at 1:00 PM at Half Moon Bay Library. Anita Felicelli (How We Know Our Time Travelers), Nina Schuyler (In This Ravishing World) and Zach Williams (Beautiful Days) join us for a conversation about the thrills of writing, reading and publishing a short story.
Giveaway copies of their short story collections will be available at our community libraries in advance of the event, with limited copies available at the event door. A book signing will follow the conversation and Q&A.
Meet Anita Felicelli
Anita Felicelli, opens a new window is the author of the short story collection How We Know Our Time Travelers, a 2024 Foreward INDIES Finalist that Publishers Weekly calls “a shimmering fantastical [transportive] collection. Readers will delight in Felicelli’s off-kilter vision.”
Anita loves the short story because of “the intensity that is enabled by the short story form.” Acceptance of intensity in the form allows her to go deeper and more precisely into a smaller moment in time than novels, which often ask for at least a few large movements and can be messier. She particularly likes “stories that willfully bend or play with the form and genre to say something (or try to say something) interesting about the story's questions.”
Read Anita’s writing online, opens a new window.
Meet Nina Schuyler
Nina Schuyler, opens a new window is the author of In This Ravishing World, winner of the W.S. Porter Prize and the Prism Prize for Climate Literature. Carole Stivers (The Mother Code) calls it “Richard Powers’s The Overstory meets Kim Stanley Robinson’s The Ministry for the Future—a riveting read that grabs the heart and won’t let go.”
Nina loves the short story because “it's like a strong espresso bursting with desire, turmoil and risky behavior. Unlike the novel, the short story invites audaciousness. It wants to do things you've never seen before.” She is especially drawn to “the short story ending that, when the reader turns and looks over her shoulder, sees how surprising, how inevitable.” And, in the short story, “subtext layers and layers the literal plot—nothing is merely itself.”
Read Nina’s writing online, opens a new window.
Meet Zach Williams
Zach Williams, opens a new window is the author of Beautiful Days, nominated for a 2025 PEN America Literary Award and called a Best Book of 2024 by The New Yorker, Publisher’s Weekly and others. The Washington Post calls it “one of the year’s best debuts...a glorious creepfest reminiscent of speculative collections by Carmen Maria Machado, Mariana Enríquez and other children of Lovecraft.”
Zach loves the short story because of “the relationship stories have to the subconscious. You can start writing one almost accidentally, on a hunch, without having any idea as to what you’re getting into.” Just like the reader, the short story writer is often surprised.
Read Zach’s writing online, opens a new window.
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