Short stories by Elizabeth Tallent
Elizabeth Tallent is the author of the novel Museum Pieces and four collections of short stories, In Constant Flight, Time with Children, Honey, and Mendocino Fire. Her stories have appeared in The New Yorker, Esquire, Harper's, Grand Street, The Paris Review, and The Threepenny Review, as well as in The Best American Short Stories, O. Henry Prize Stories, the Pushcart Prize Award, and The Best American Essays. Her teaching has been honored with Stanford's Phi Beta Kappa Teaching Award and the Northern California Chapter of Phi Beta Kappa's Excellence in Teaching Award, recognizing "the extraordinary gifts, diligence, and amplitude of spirit that mark the best in teaching." In 2009 she was honored with Stanford's Dean's Award for Distinguished Teaching. Mendocino Fire is a finalist for the 2016 PEN/Faulkner Award. Her memoir Perfectionism is forthcoming from Harper.
Listing 7 stories.
A man does various jobs on a nearby farm owned by an old man as he struggles with problems with his wife. One night, the old man asks him to kill a skunk who has been eating his hens, and the hunt has unexpected consequences.
An ice skater in the entertainment industry, to the chagrin of her cat-obsessed mother, performs the same routine each night with a man dressed in a bear suit.
A young writer attends a writer's workshop where she begins a relationship with an author whose books she loves. But after they move in together, she finds that his life begins to suffuse every aspect of hers.
After his grandson’s estranged mother comes back to town, a man must struggle with his long-held sexual attraction for the woman, his son’s ex-girlfriend.
While witnessing his boys of his neighbor's family commit chaotic damage to the people of the neighborhood, a father continues to show kindness. The neighbor's family faces their own drama until they are no longer a part of the neighborhood.
A professor and mother recounts the summer before 9/11, which she spent with her son touring London. While visiting various monuments around the city, she grows anxious and resentful over the loss of her son's youth and innocence.
A female professor at a contemporary university remembers an old conversation with a former teacher of hers, which prompts her to reconsider her job, solitude, and love of reading.