I would have announced this sooner, but I took at week-long internet break (inspired by Bookbii) and it was lovely.

Meghan has won the Short Story Advent Calendar giveaway! She’s an accomplished short story writer herself. Check out her writing here.

Thank you to everyone who entered. I asked you to tell me about a great short story collection as part of your entry, and did you guys ever come through. Below is the full list of recommendations:

• Something I’ve Been Meaning to Tell You by Alice Munro
• Minnie’s Room: The Peacetime Stories of Mollie Panter-Downes
• A Good Man is Hard to Find by Flannery O’Connor
• A Summer Tragedy by Arna Bontemps
• The Complete Stories of Franz Kafka
• The Dark and Other Love Stories by Deborah Willis
• Leaving the Sea by Ben Marcus
• The Swimmer by John Cheever
• The UnAmericans by Molly Antopol
• All Summer in a Day by Ray Bradbury
• The Virago Book of Victorian Ghost Stories
• Stories of Your Life and Others by Ted Chiang
• The Great Profundo and Other Stories by Bernard MacLaverty
• My Devils by Brian Doyle, in The Best Small Fictions 2017
• The Boat by Alistair MacLeod
• The Lottery by Shirley Jackson
• Nothing Goes to Waste by Hugh Howley
• The Venus Effect by Joseph Allen Hill, in The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2017
• The Husband Stitch by Carmen Maria Machado

And my recent short story reads:

• The Dark and Other Love Stories by Deborah Willis. Echoed by a contest entrant above, I’m disappointed this didn’t make the Giller Prize shortlist. A near-perfect collection. It is dark, there is love, so it even lives up to the title.
• Annie Muktuk and Other Stories by Norma Dunning. Another near-perfect collection from a debut author. I met Norma last week (at RISE Book Club, check it out if you’re in Edmonton), and she’s such a patient and generous person! And a good reader. She talked about how she practices reading stories aloud before going to a reading, and it shows.

Go buy the Short Story Advent Calendar before it’s gone, and meet me over on YouTube for daily videos starting December 1.