Hi everyone. Here's what we've been up to at Necessary Fiction this week:

Frequent reviewer Court Ludwick wrote about The Perfect Circle by Claudia Petrucci, translated by Anne Milano Appel for World Editions. 

Regular interviewer Amina Gautier joined us again, this time in conversation with Jon Hickey about his novel Big Chief. 

And this week's featured story was "A Little Water" by Susan Bearman.

Finally, for me and I expect for many of you this is the transitional time of year when those of us who teach or attend classes are returning to school or sending kids back. If that includes you, I hope the school year ahead is a good one, stimulating and rejuvenating and inspiring. I won't teach my first classes until Wednesday but have been meeting groups of undergraduates and graduate students this week as they arrive on campus, and their excitement and energy are already lifting me up. In a session yesterday a new first year asked the faculty panelists to suggest a favorite book and seeing that crowded room of young students copying down the titles and hearing them react as we described our choices was a beautiful thing. (My suggestion, by the way, was Adam Ouston's Waypoints, for reasons shared here, and I was glad to have more than one student come up to ask more about it after the event concluded.)

Thanks for reading,

Steve Himmer