12th International Conference on the Short Story in English

June 27-30, 2012

North Little Rock, Arkansas

Topic

Where there is a river in a town, there is a bridge. North Little Rock has six of them. Bridge-building has always been a civilizing act, an expression of the human need to get from one side of a question, a hope, a desire, to the other. Stories, too are bridges from here to there. Whether high-flying or low-hanging, they have what Elizaben Bowen called "necessariness." They help us get from past to present, innocence to experience, or back the other way, from knowledge to mystery. The theme of our last conference was "borders," so perhaps our emphasis on bridges this time is inevitable, or at least urgent, as we move into the second decade of the 21st century.

Thinking about stories from the perspective of bridges leads us to consider the form's rock-bottom features (what genre theorists hope to find) and its slippery mutability (what cultural historians hope to trace). How do stories get from one century to another, one language to another, one worldview to another? How does Romanticism get to Realism, Modernism to Postmodernism? What keeps a story cycle going? How does a writer get from thought to page, magazine to book, early to late work? What happens when a story stops in mid-air?

It's not surprising that scholars have focused on the two ends of the arc -- beginnings and endings -- and on the nets of imagery, the structural designs, that hold up the middle. Just as important are the many ways of studying where the posts are driven, what values are transported, who levies the toll, and whom, finally, the bridge serves. These questions, and infinite number of related ones, are open for discussion. Short narratives are tightropes over chasms. Stories defy gravity. Show us how it's done, ponder it's significance, and marvel at the performances of our guest authors. Whatever route brings you to Arkansas, we hope you will join us in the crossing of many bridges, real and imaginary, as we explore the world of the short story.

SHORT STORY TRADITIONS:

BRIDGES TO MODERNITY AND BEYOND

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