Short stories by Sarah Shun-Lien Bynum
Sarah Shun-lien Bynum is the author of two novels—Ms. Hempel Chronicles, a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award, and Madeleine Is Sleeping, a finalist for the National Book Award and winner of the Janet Heidinger Kafka Prize—and a story collection, Likes. Her fiction has appeared in many magazines and anthologies, including The New Yorker, Ploughshares, Tin House, and TheBest American Short Stories. The recipient of an O. Henry Award, a Whiting Award, and an NEA Fellowship, she was named one of “20 Under 40” fiction writers by The New Yorker. She lives in Los Angeles.
Listing 7 stories.
A seventh-grade English teacher copes with the recent death of her father and assigns a memoir that her students love reading. However, their parents question her for her pedagogical choices because of the swear words and provocative topics in the book.
When a married couple announces that they are getting a divorce, their best friends who are also a couple are forced to confront what this configuration means for their social life.
A father struggles to connect with his twelve-year-old daughter who is plagued by self-doubt and isolation, enraptured by social media, and debilitated by tendonitis. Despite her detachment, his daughter may be the only one who can save him from his post-election disillusionment with the country's failures.
In modern-day Los Angeles, a young lesbian woman lives next door to an actress she's been a fan of since the actress was an underground drag queen in New York. The actress pitches an idea for a TV show to the woman, whose partner is a children's show producer.
A woman who has moved to the countryside to write a chapter on an American philosopher reflects on and recovers from her recent miscarriage.
A would-be burglar enters a suburban home. In the same town, a woman drives home for an exterminator appointment, and her husband tries to write the season premiere of a time-traveling crime show.
When her co-worker returns pregnant and happy from a year of travel, a seventh grade English teacher reflects on her dissatisfaction with her own life and her longing for decisiveness.