Curtis Smith's stories and essays have appeared in over fifty literary journals including American Literary Review, Mid-American Review, CutBank, Night Train, Mississippi Review, Lake Effect, Greensboro Review, The Humanist, Passages North, South Dakota Review, Hobart, West Branch, William and Mary Review and many others. His work has been included in a number of anthologies and nominated for a half dozen Pushcarts. His work has been named to the Best American Short Stories Distinguished Stories List, the Best American Mystery Stories Distinguished Stories List, and the Notable Writing list of the Best American Spiritual Writing.

His first novel, An Unadorned Life was released two years ago. March Street Press has released two collections of his short-short stories, Placing Ourselves Among the Living and In the Jukebox Light, and his latest book, The Species Crown, a collection of stories and a novella, is now available from Press 53.

Curtis lives and works in Pennsylvania with his wife, Michele, and son, Evan.



This is what I know about Curt Smith, straight from the official bio and from Myspace: author of two collections of short-short fiction from March Street Press; a novelist; published in over fifty literary journals; fan of music as disparate as Wilco, the Black Keys, Blondie, and Lou Reed. What else should we know about you and your work before we start talking about it?

To be honest, that's probably more than most people know about me already.

In this collection, you're particularly strong in that no man's land of stories, between 750 and 1500 words in length. Do you find yourself more comfortable in shorter forms than long?

No, not really. There are a few stories in the collection over 7,000 words, not to mention the novella. And this past year, I've been lucky to place a number of even longer stories. Some stories are born to be long, some short. Often, a short story insists it's long until I suck it up and chop it back to its proper shape. That said, there are a number of aspects of the short-short form I find very attractive—they're dense and precise, and the good ones bristle with powerful language or images or, in the best cases, both. Perhaps short-short stories come to me more easily because I usually get caught up in images before storylines. I think most of my shorter stories are driven by these images. The longer ones tend to be taken over by plot.

For the rest of the interview, go here.