X-Nico

4 unusual facts about Selected Shorts


A Christmas Memory

For the live-audience Selected Shorts series, broadcast nationally on NPR stations, actor John Shea recorded "A Christmas Memory" in the late 1990s.

Selected Shorts

The readings are recorded live and become the basis of a one-hour radio program, presently hosted by Parker Posey, with a so-called "literary commentator," Hannah Tinti of One Story Magazine, and are produced in conjunction with WNYC.

Selected Shorts is an event at New York’s Symphony Space on the Upper West Side, in which actors read classic and new short fiction before a live audience.

Symphony Space

As of 2010, Symphony Space hosts 600 or more events annually, including an annual free music Wall to Wall marathon; Bloomsday on Broadway (celebrating James Joyce's Ulysses); and Selected Shorts, broadcast nationally over Public Radio International.


Benjamin Percy

At a reading of this story at Symphony Space for the NPR radio program Selected Shorts, the editor for the 2006 Best American collection, Ann Patchett, indicated that she considered the story to be the best in the collection.


see also

Fiona Maazel

Maazel's work has appeared in publications including The New York Times Book Review, The New York Times, Tin House, Bomb, Fence, The Mississippi Review, Conjunctions, The Common, The Yale Review, Anthem, The Village Voice, N+1, This American Life, Selected Shorts, and on salon.com.