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The Canadian short story: digging into the stats

Over at The Danforth Review, Michael Bryson has written a long survey on “Short Fiction in Canada, 2004/05.” The overall theme here seems to be the contrast between “realistic” fiction and more “avant-garde” forms, and Bryson lines up plenty of quotations from commentators and authors in support of one or the other. Taking the ReLit Awards short-story-collection longlist as a sample, Bryson unearths some hard numbers: “Of the 30 titles … 17 appear to be generally ‘realistic’ and seven appear to be generally ‘experimental,’ with six seeming to me to be too close to call.” Further number-crunching ensues, bringing in issues of geography and gender.

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Click here for the Danforth Review feature