Blue Sky: five short stories

Abstract

Though some of these five short stories seem related in theme, they were not written with any connection in mind. They were, instead, an exploration of different settings, different lives, either beginning or ending, but always aiming at a rebirth, forced or hoped for. The difference between these two movements—arrivals and departures—is often minute and almost impossible to discern. The fourth story, “Sandhill Cranes,” was broadcasted in podcast form by PenDust Radio in September 2020, and published in Carve Magazine the following month. It won the Editor’s Choice Award in the 2020 Raymond Carver Short Story Contest. “Sandhill Cranes” represents a turning point in my writing, and a moment in time just before I redefined myself as a writer, and allowed myself to be a writer, at last—it also represents the beginning of a new phase in my craft, and showed me the way to portraying immigration, the defining principle of my life, in my fiction; the other four stories in this collection were written after “Sandhill Cranes,” that is, after November 2019.