Showing results for "The Interview" in Satire

Acclaimed author of The Adults Alison Espach’s short story "In-Depth Market Research Interviews with Dead People" is an at-once hilarious and heart-breaking portrait of a dead woman’s marriage and the Volvo that stood in the middle of it all.

Young Nicholas Nickleby is suddenly thrust into the harsh realities of life after his father’s death leaves the family penniless. Determined to protect his mother and sister, Nicholas must navigate a world of greed, cruelty, and corruption. From the grim boarding school run by the cruel Wackford Squeers to the bustling streets of London, Nicholas encounters both villainy and kindness, finding allies in unexpected places and enemies at every turn.

In our bureaucratized culture, we’re inundated by documents: itineraries, instruction manuals, permit forms, primers, letters of complaint, end-of-year reports, accidentally forwarded email, traffic updates, ad infinitum. David Shields and Matthew Vollmer, both writers and professors, have gathered 40 short fictions that they’ve found to be seriously hilarious and irresistibly teachable (in both writing and literature courses): counterfeit texts that capture the barely suppressed frustration and yearning that percolate just below the surface of most official documents.