This week, author Lauren Groff and editor John Stauffer discuss the craft and history of short stories, as well as their latest work. Moderated by author and professor Peter Coviello. Groff, a three-time National Book Award finalist, recently released Brawler: Stories, an "audacious collection [that] surprises readers with the vivid lives few of us notice (Kirkus). Stauffer is the editor of the Library of America's recent two-volume anthology The American Short Story: The Nineteenth Century.

This program was part of the 2026 American Writers Festival. Co-hosted by the American Writers Museum and Chicago Public Library, the American Writers Festival is a free literary event featuring in-depth conversations with diverse writers from across genres and backgrounds. This conversation took place June 7th, 2026 and was recorded live at the Harold Washington Library Center.

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About The American Short Story: The Nineteenth Century:

A landmark short story collection: More than 100 short stories by 51 different 19th-century writers redefine the great American literary form. Incudes both literary masterpieces—including classic stories by Poe, Hawthorne, Twain, James, and Wharton—and new rediscoveries.

About Brawler: Stories:

A stunning, fierce collection from a master of the short story and one of the most important writers of our time. Read alone, each story in Lauren Groff’s electric collection is an individual triumph, bold, agile, and packed with power. Read together, they hum in exhilarating resonance. Ranging from the 1950s to the present day and moving across age, class, and region—from New England to Florida to California—these nine stories reflect and expand upon a shared theme: the ceaseless battle between humans’ dark and light angels.

About the speakers:

LAUREN GROFF is a three-time National Book Award finalist and the New York Times bestselling author of the novels The Monsters of Templeton, Arcadia, Fates and Furies, Matrix, and The Vaster Wilds, and the celebrated short story collections Delicate Edible Birds and Florida. She has won the Story Prize and the Joyce Carol Oates Prize, and has been a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. In 2024 she was named one of the "TIME 100 most influential people." Groff's work regularly appears in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, and elsewhere. Her work has been translated into thirty-six languages. She lives in Gainesville, Florida, where she and her husband run an independent bookstore, The Lynx.

JOHN STAUFFER is the Kates Professor of English at Harvard and the author/co-author of 20 books and 100+ articles, including Picturing Frederick Douglass; GIANTS: The Parallel Lives of Frederick Douglass and Abraham Lincoln; Battle Hymn of the Republic; and Black Hearts of Men. He has co-curated several exhibitions: ONE LIFE, FREDERICK DOUGLASS (NPG); WAR/PHOTOGRAPHY (MFA Houston); DJANGO UNC...