Charles E. May

Last updated

Charles E. May is a literary scholar specializing in the study of the short story. His published books include Short Stories Theories, The Modern European Short Story, Edgar Allan Poe: A Study of the Short Fiction, Fiction's Many Worlds, and The New Short Story Theories. He has also published over 200 articles in such journals as Studies in Short Fiction, Style, and The Minnesota Review . He currently maintains a blog titled "Reading the Short Story."

May is Emeritus Professor of English at California State University, Long Beach. Other academic positions he has held include president of the California State University English Council, and chairman of the C.S.U.L.B. English Department.

Related Research Articles

James Paul Blaylock is an American fantasy author. He is noted for a distinctive, humorous style, as well as being one of the pioneers of the steampunk genre of science fiction. Blaylock has cited Jules Verne, H. G. Wells, Robert Louis Stevenson, Arthur Conan Doyle and Charles Dickens as his inspirations.

Short story work of literature, usually written in narrative prose

A short story is a piece of prose fiction that typically can be read in one sitting and focuses on a self-contained incident or series of linked incidents, with the intent of evoking a single effect or mood. The short story is one of the oldest types of literature and has existed in the form of legends, mythic tales, folk tales, fairy tales, fables and anecdotes in various ancient communities across the world. The modern short story developed in the early 19th century.

Gregory Benford

Gregory Benford is an American science fiction author and astrophysicist who is Professor Emeritus at the Department of Physics and Astronomy at the University of California, Irvine. He is a contributing editor of Reason magazine.

In literary criticism, stream of consciousness is a narrative mode or method that attempts "to depict the multitudinous thoughts and feelings which [sic] pass through the mind" of a narrator. The term was coined by Alexander Bain in 1855 in the first edition of The Senses and the Intellect, when he wrote, "The concurrence of Sensations in one common stream of consciousness enables those of different senses to be associated as readily as the sensations of the same sense" (p. 359). But it is commonly credited to William James who used it in 1890 in his The Principles of Psychology. In 1918, the novelist May Sinclair (1863–1946) first applied the term stream of consciousness, in a literary context, when discussing Dorothy Richardson's (1873–1957) novels. Pointed Roofs (1915), the first work in Richardson's series of 13 semi-autobiographical novels titled Pilgrimage, is the first complete stream-of-consciousness novel published in English. However, in 1934, Richardson comments that "Proust, James Joyce, Virginia Woolf & D.R. ... were all using 'the new method', though very differently, simultaneously". There were, however, many earlier precursors and the technique is still used by contemporary writers.

Frank Norris American journalist and novelist (1870-1902)

Benjamin Franklin "Frank" Norris Jr. was an American journalist and novelist during the Progressive Era, whose fiction was predominantly in the naturalist genre. His notable works include McTeague: A Story of San Francisco (1899), The Octopus: A Story of California (1901) and The Pit (1903).

T. C. Boyle

Thomas Coraghessan Boyle, also known as T. C. Boyle and T. Coraghessan Boyle, is an American novelist and short story writer. Since the mid-1970s, he has published sixteen novels and more than 100 short stories. He won the PEN/Faulkner award in 1988, for his third novel, World's End, which recounts 300 years in upstate New York.

American literature Literature written or related to the United States

American literature is literature predominantly written or produced in English in the United States of America and its preceding colonies. Before the founding of the United States, the Thirteen Colonies on the eastern coast of the present-day United States were heavily influenced by English literature. The American literary tradition thus began as part of the broader tradition of English-language literature. However, a small amount of literature exists in other immigrant languages and Native American tribes have a rich tradition of oral storytelling.

Genre fiction, also known as popular fiction, is a term used in the book-trade for fictional works written with the intent of fitting into a specific literary genre, in order to appeal to readers and fans already familiar with that genre.

James E. Gunn (writer) American science fiction author

James Edwin Gunn was an American science fiction writer, editor, scholar, and anthologist. His work as an editor of anthologies includes the six-volume Road to Science Fiction series. He won the Hugo Award for "Best Related Work" in 1983 and he won or was nominated for several other awards for his non-fiction works in the field of science fiction studies. The Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America made him its 24th Grand Master in 2007, and he was inducted by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame in 2015. His novel The Immortals was adapted into a 1970–71 TV series starring Christopher George.

Literary fiction is a term used in the book-trade to distinguish novels that are regarded as having literary merit, from most commercial or "genre" fiction. However, the boundaries are not fixed, and the serious study of genre fiction has developed within academia in recent decades.

Richard Russo

Richard Russo is an American novelist, short story writer, screenwriter, and teacher.

Shirley Geok-lin Lim

Shirley Geok-lin Lim was born in Malacca Malaysia. She is an American writer of poetry, fiction, and criticism. Her first collection of poems, Crossing The Peninsula, published in 1980, won her the Commonwealth Poetry Prize, a first both for an Asian and for a woman. Among several other awards that she has received, her memoir, Among the White Moon Faces, received the 1997 American Book Award.

Al Sarrantonio is an American horror and science fiction writer, editor and publisher who has authored more than 50 books and 90 short stories. He has also edited numerous anthologies and has been called "brilliant" and "a master anthologist" by Booklist.

The culture of California is tied to the culture of the United States as a whole. However, there are features that are unique to California. With roots in the cultures of Spain, Asia, Mexico, and the eastern United States, California integrates foods, languages and traditions from all over the world.

Charles Yu American writer

Charles Yu is an American writer. He is the author of the novels How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe and Interior Chinatown as well as the short-story collections Third Class Superhero and Sorry Please Thank You. In 2007 he was named a "5 under 35" honoree by the National Book Foundation.

Hans Ansgar Ostrom is an American professor, writer, editor, and scholar. Ostrom is a Professor of African American Studies and English the University of Puget Sound (1983–present) where he teaches courses on African American literature, creative writing, and poetry as a genre. He is known for his authorship of various books on African American studies and creative writing, and novels including Three to Get Ready, Honoring Juanita, and Without One, as well as The Coast Starlight: Collected Poems 1976–2006.

Valerie Miner is an American novelist, journalist, and professor. A dual US/UK citizen, she lives in San Francisco and Mendocino, California with her partner.

Russell Leong

Russell Charles Leong is an academic editor, professor, writer, and long-time Chen-style t'ai chi ch'uan student. The long-time editor of Amerasia Journal (1977–2010), Leong was an adjunct professor of English and Asian-American Studies at University of California, Los Angeles and currently serves as senior editor for international projects. He is the founding editor of the CUNY FORUM: Asian American / Asian Studies, published by the Asian American / Asian Research Institute - CUNY, and served as a Dr. Thomas Tam Visiting Professor at Hunter College/CUNY. He the author of Phoenix Eyes and Other Stories which received the American Book Award. His most recent publication, MothSutra, a graphic poem about New York City restaurant bicycle deliverymen, was released in 2015.

Viet Thanh Nguyen

Viet Thanh Nguyen is a Vietnamese-American novelist. He is the Aerol Arnold Chair of English and Professor of English and American Studies and Ethnicity at the University of Southern California. Nguyen's debut novel, The Sympathizer, won the 2016 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction among other accolades, including the Dayton Literary Peace Prize, the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize, the Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction from the American Library Association, the Edgar Award for Best First Novel from an American Author from the Mystery Writers of America, and the Asian/Pacific American Award for Literature in Fiction from the Asian/Pacific American Librarians Association. He was awarded a MacArthur Foundation Fellowship and a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2017. He is also a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Nguyen is also a regular contributor, op-ed columnist for The New York Times, covering immigration, refugees, politics, culture and South East Asia.

Harold Toliver is an American literary critic, theorist and writer. Currently, he is professor emeritus at the University of California, Irvine. His research interests are in the areas of Renaissance and seventeenth-century literature, English and Comparative Literature, Literary Theory & Criticism. He received Guggenheim awards and the Distinguished Research Award (1982). Toliver is married and has two children.

References