The Strange Recital is an audio anthology of short fiction. It is not genre-specific and delights in perceptions of reality that warp and fold in unexpected ways. The literary works we showcase might be odd, humorous, or surreal.... They might remind you of Borges, Nabokov, Kafka, Pynchon. Or none of the above.
Each podcast episode features one writer and runs about 25 minutes. It includes a story reading – the Recital – a brief musical interlude, and an author interview with a twist – the Post Recital. Subscribe to get a new episode twice a month. It's free.
"How's your IPA?" "Not bad." "So...are your classes going
okay?" "Well, yes and no. Are you finding that these students think
differently than we did? It's like they take everything literally."
"No sense of poetry or metaphor, you mean? I see the same
thing with the math students. For instance, the idea of...
"Vera is losing her grip on time. She’s been driving all
night, for days even, she can’t say. She pulls over onto
the shoulder of road next to the creek, her wheels rumbling across
a muddy lump of plowed snow as she comes to a stop."
To be young forever...is it really what you want? In this
excerpt from a new...
"I don’t remember how I heard about the burned girl. Probably
it was my new friend Scot, with his spiritual leanings and whom I
was seeing a lot of at that time, who told me. A new friend is
useful in the kind of crisis that ensues when you are cutting your
old life loose, or have had it cut loose for you."
"Affecting lightheartedness, I trod the moist pavements of the
narrow streets. As though in tears and veiled, the lamps
glimmered through the chill gloom and sucked their reflections
slowly from the wet ground. The forgotten years of my youth came
back to me. How I used to love the dark, sad evenings of late
autumn and...
"The month was October, the day brilliant. Bareheaded, bald
too young but well-bearded, a man not long past his youth strode
along Bleecker, his comfortable shoes belying the business-like
focus of his venture. His water-flow way of dodging fellow walkers
was well-practiced, a city-dweller's skill used even as...