Literary Salon debuts with Alice Munro stories

"Passion" and "Wenlock Edge," two stories by Alice Munro--the Canadian writer many consider the one of the finest short story writers now working in the English language--will be the focus of the first installment of "Short Story Masters--A Literary Salon," a new monthly series co-sponsored by Just Buffalo Literary Center and Talking Leaves Books from  6:30 p.m. to 7:30 p.m. tonight at Talking Leaves Books, 3158 Main St. in Buffalo.  The event is free and open to the public.

The host of the new monthly salon is Greg Gerke, a Wisconsin native and University of Oregon graduate whose fiction has appeared in many publications and is currently co-curator of the Exhibit X Fiction & Prose Series.  His first collection of stories is forthcoming from BlazeVox Books.  About "Short Story Masters" Gerke says he envisions "a story group beginning with discussing the work and then branching out to sharing our lives and experiences, because that is what readers bring to the text whenever we encounter fiction.  We will discuss narrative, characters, attitudes, tone, style, and many other aspects of the short story."

On December 16th, the salon will continue with discussion of Munro's "The Albanian Virgin" and "Dimension."  In subsequent months, Gerke and the salon will take up the work of such short story masters as Anton Chekhov, Isaac Babel, Paula Fox, Denis Johnson, William Trevor, Raymond Carver and Edward P. Jones.

--R.D. Pohl