My guest today is Desiree Cooper, the 2015 Kresge Artist Fellow. Cooper is a former attorney. She is also a Pulitzer Prize-nominated journalist and much-beloved community activist. Originally from Virginia, she currently lives in Virginia. BUT she lived in Detroit for decades and will always be an honorary Detroiter!

She is much beloved here, and I am honored to call her my friend.

Today’s podcast includes four stories from her award-winning flash fiction collection, Know the Mother. Cooper’s fiction, poetry and essays have appeared in The New York Times, 2023 Flash Fiction America, The Best Small Fictions 2018, Callaloo, Michigan Quarterly Review, The Rumpus, River Teeth, and Best African American Fiction 2010, among other publications.

This podcast was recorded at Book Suey, a fabulous cooperatively owned bookstore in Hamtramck, Michigan. My fellow moderator was member-owner Eli Sparkman.

Eli is the Detroit Program and Volunteer Coordinator for 826michigan, a youth writing organization. He is a Teaching Artist for The Moth and a Memoir Reader for Split Lip Magazine. He graduated from Northern Michigan University’s MFA program, where he was a Flash Fiction Editor for Passages North.

And many many thanks to Vincent James Perrone, who edited this audio podcast—the first one I’ve hosted with a live audience. Vincent is also a writer from Detroit. He’s the author of the poetry collection, Starving Romantic. He is currently based in Charlottesville, VA, where he is pursuing an MFA at the University of Virginia.

I hope you enjoy this episode and if you do, please consider joining me as a yearly member of the Substack and/or helping to sponsor LDAS with a small donation. I would love to produce more content, but I need funds to do that. LDAS is entirely listener-supported, which allows us the freedom to create content of our choosing, and I hope to keep it that way.

I appreciate your support.

And now for the show!

Hi Everyone,

I had so much fun discussing “Monitor World” with Cleo Qian. In case you missed my earlier posts, “Monitor World” was first published in Shenandoah in 2021, and is available ⁠here.⁠

Please read the story before listening to our discussion!

Here’s a link to Lucia Berlin, another writer discussed during our interview.

Next up on Let’s Deconstruct a Story, paid subscribers will be talking about Ethan Canin’s story, “The Palace Thief,” on Thursday, February 27th at 3 pm.

Cleo Qian is a queer fiction writer and poet. She is the author of the award-winning story collection LET’S GO LET’S GO LET’S GO (Tin House, 2023) and a 2024 National Poetry Series finalist.

Her fiction, poetry, and essays have appeared in nearly thirty outlets including, recently, ZYZZYVA, The Sun, and The Massachusetts Review. She has been awarded residencies at Casa Snowapple and the Sundress Academy for the Arts. She is a 2024 MacDowell Fellow and will be the 2025 Notre Dame Storozynski Writing Fellow.

She has taught creative writing at the low-residency University of Southern Maine Stonecoast MFA program and the Tin House Summer Workshop.

Please find Cleo Qian’s fantatic short story collection, Let’s Go, Let’s Go, Let’s Go here on Bookshop.

Cheers,

Kelly

PS: All of the podcasts are free, but if you would like to support the podcast, please consider subscribing to this Substack. You’ll receive bonus material—discussions! prompts! fun Zoom discussion! Yay!

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit letsdeconstructastory.substack.com/subscribe

Hi Everyone,

“The Depletion Prompts” was first published in The New Yorker on October 25, 2021, and is available ⁠here.⁠

Here’s a link to two other stories discussed during our interview:

Vladimir Nabokov's “Signs and Symbols.”

Virginia Woolf’s “The Mark on the Wall.”

Next month, I’ll be talking to Cleo Qian about her story, “Monitor World” first published in Shenandoah. Check out our discussion here on Substack!

Cheers!

Kelly

PS: All of the podcasts are free, but if you would like to support the podcast, please consider subscribing to this Substack. You’ll receive bonus material—discussions! prompts! fun Zoom discussion! Yay!

Kelly Fordon talks to Brad Felver about his story "Orphans" which was first published in Subtropics and later chosen for The Best Short Stories 2024: The O. Henry Prize Winners by Amor Towles.

For more information, and to access a PDF of the story, please visit Let's Deconstruct a Story on Substack.

Brad Felver is a fiction writer, essayist, and teacher of writing. His honors include two O. Henry Prizes, the Drue Heinz Literature Prize, an Ohio Arts Council Individual Excellence Award, the Zone 3 Fiction Prize, and a Fellowship to the Bread Loaf Writer’s Conference among others.

His debut collection of stories, The Dogs of Detroit, was a finalist for the Ohioana Book Award and was named one of the Best Books of 2018 by Library Journal and the Washington Independent Review of Books. His fiction and essays have appeared widely in magazines such as One Story, New England Review, Colorado Review, Story, Subtropics, and many others.

He lives in Ohio with his wife and two sons.

Podcast host Kelly Fordon’s latest book is a short story collection called I Have the Answer (Wayne State University Press, 2020), which was chosen as a Midwest Book Award finalist and an Eric Hoffer Finalist. Her novel-in-stories, Garden for the Blind, (WSUP, 2015) is a 2016 Michigan Notable Book, a 2016 Foreword Reviews’ INDIEFAB Finalist, a Midwest Book Award Finalist, Eric Hoffer Finalist, and an IPPY Awards Bronze Medalist in the short story category. Her first full-length poetry collection, Goodbye Toothless House, (Kattywompus Press, 2019) was chosen as an Eyelands International Prize Finalist and an Eric Hoffer Finalist for poetry. Her second poetry collection, What Trammels the Heart, will be published in 2025.

Hi Everyone,

This post is a video recording of my preparation for the interview with Brad next Wednesday. If you enjoy deconstructing stories, please feel free to join me for one of these prep sessions. I’ll be recording again on November 8th as I deconstruct David Means' story, “The Depletion Prompts.”

Paid subscribers will have access to the Zoom link for David Means.

Paid subscriptions also include the annotations and transcript from this recording today.

My interview with Brad Felver about “Orphans” will be posted on November 1st.

Cheers!

Kelly

PS: Please consider subscribing to Subtropics.

Find out more about the author, Brad Felver.

Thanks,

Kelly

Hi Everyone,

I'm thrilled to host Cara Blue Adams today on the podcast. We talked about her stellar short story, "Vision," available from Joyland Magazine. I met Cara years ago at the Kenyon Writers Workshop (which I highly recommend by the way...) so it was great fun to reconnect on the podcast.

Cara's work was recommended by Vincent Perrone, who is a part owner of the co-op bookstore, Book Suey, in Hamtramck, MI, so he joined us for the podcast as well. See his bio below, and please consider buying from Bookshop or even directly from Book Suey to support local bookstores!

Enjoy the show and see you on April 1st!

Kelly

Cara Blue Adams is the author of the interlinked story collection You Never Get It Back (University of Iowa Press, 2021), named a New York Times Editors’ Choice and awarded the John Simmons Short Fiction Prize, judged by Brandon Taylor, who calls it “a modern classic.” The collection was shortlisted for the Mary McCarthy Prize and longlisted for the Story Prize. Over twenty-five of her stories appear in magazines like the Granta, The Kenyon Review, Epoch, American Short Fiction, and Electric Literature, and her nonfiction appears in Bookforum and The Believer.

She has received the Kenyon Review Short Fiction Prize, the Missouri Review William Peden Prize, and the Meringoff Prize in Fiction, along with a 2018 Center for Fiction Emerging Writer fellowship and selection as a Pushcart Prize Notable. She has also received support from the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, the Sewanee Writers’ Conference, the VCCA, the Lighthouse Works, the Kimmel Harding Nelson Center for the Arts, and the New York State Council on the Arts.

Cara earned a B.A. in English Language and Literature from Smith College and an MFA from the University of Arizona. Originally from Vermont, she has lived in Boston, Tucson, Montreal, Maine, South Carolina, and Baton Rouge. She is a former coeditor of The Southern Review. Currently, she is an associate professor in the MFA program at Temple University and lives in Brooklyn and the Hudson Valley.

Purchase Cara's book at Book Suey (link above) or Book Shop or Amazon.

My co-host:

Vincent James Perrone is the author of the poetry collection, Starving Romantic (11:11 Press, 2018), the microchap, Travelogue For The Dispossessed (Ghost City Press, 2021), and a contributor to the anthology, Collected Voices in the Expanded Field (11:11 Press, 2020). His recent and forthcoming work can be found in Pithead Chapel, New Flash Fiction Review, TIMBER, Storm Cellar, and A Common Well Journal. Vincent lives in Detroit where he teaches at Wayne State University. He reads for Conduit and is a member-owner of the co-op bookstore, Book Suey.

#shortstories

#creativewriting

#joylandmag

#kenyonreview

#booksuey