Welcome to Reading Alice & Others

My notes and thoughts on short stories which have moved me deeply. If you'd like to know more, or you've just subscribed, start here.

For years, I've had this idea of setting up some kind of short story club, but never knew how to do it or what it would look like. What I did know was that I wanted to have a place where I could geek out with fellow short story lovers about my favourite form, and my favourite stories, and favourite authors. Well, finally, here it is.

Welcome, then, to Reading Alice & Others. (Best enjoyed, no doubt, with a hot cup of tea).

Why short stories?

Some of you might know of my short story collection Things We Do Not Tell The People We Love. But my love and curiosity for reading short stories (a borderline obsession, really) started first as a reader, long before I turned my hand to writing them. The form, its precision, its ability to be both about a moment but also about a life, speaks to me and always has done. 

Why Alice Munro?

Because she’s one of my favourite writers. It was years ago that I first began to read Alice Munro. Her quiet yet clear and sharp stories of (mostly but not always) unhappy lives being lived in vague, far-off rainy Canadian towns somehow slipped under my skin and into my heart. At the time that I first encountered her stories, they spoke to me, and stayed with me. Perhaps more than any other kind of writing had done before. 

I’ve been making notes on Alice Munro’s stories for years, jotting down my thoughts on structure and form, thinking about how she manages huge time lines and leaps and thinking about how simple but beautiful her prose is. But most of all, more than anything else, I’ve made notes simply to remember what it is about each story that moves me, that speaks to me.

These notes mostly live in the margins of the soft pages of my old battered copies of her books, or in various notebooks. Now, with a little encouragement from dear friends and followers, I’ve (tentatively) decided to keep another kind of record here, a notes-to-self of sorts for any lover or indeed writer of short stories to turn to.

But there will be other writers too!

From time to time, I’ll focus on some of my other favourite short story writers too (hence the title of this Substack being ‘Reading Alice and Others’) and pick a story and try to make sense of what it is about it that moves me so. I love Alice Munro’s stories, but I also love Tessa Hadley’s and Lily King’s and Lorrie Moore’s and Jhumpa Lahiri’s and Edith Wharton’s and Jenny Zhang’s and the list just goes on and on. And I’ll be keen to hear your recommendations too.

Who is Reading Alice & Others for?

Everyone, I hope! I imagine you’ll enjoy it most of all if you’re a lover of short stories, whether that’s reading or writing them.

It’s also for those who are unsure about how they feel about short stories but would be open to giving them a try. There’s this myth that short stories are somehow difficult to understand the point of, or unsatisfying because they end too soon or don’t have enough depth - but I hope that my notes here might show that’s not really true at all. I hope to encourage anyone with even only the tiniest of interest in short stories to sit with them a little longer.

I also hope that Reading Alice & Others will appeal to those of you who already know my writing, whether from my books, or my existing newsletter, or from a writing course you might have taken with me. Maybe you just want to read more of my writing. If that’s you, then please know I’m incredibly humbled and am sending you an extra big, super warm, thank you.

But, if I’m honest, this is also for me. When I’m feeling a little lost or stuck in my own writing, it does me so much good to come out of it and read a short story and sit with it a while. It makes me excited to return to my own writing. Brings me back to life, in a way. It means something to me, to know that others reading might feel this pleasure also, whilst reading my words here.

So, what can you expect here?

Every month, I’ll share one in-depth piece of writing about one short story by Alice Munro or another favourite author. There’ll be:

• a little personal writing, explaining why I’ve chosen any given story,

• followed by a little synopsis,

• then we’ll get deep into the feelings and the thoughts,

• and I’ll always invite you to share your own observations in the comments

Where possible, I’ll do my best to prioritise stories that are available to read online, so that you can read along with me. Sometimes, I’ll reference stories in published collections, and will share links for you to buy those books if you would so like. 

Maybe, eventually, I’ll go behind the scenes of some of my own short stories, too. Let’s see.

What you won’t find

Reading Alice & Others isn’t some kind of highly-regarded academic literary critique and I don’t do research for it or look up other analyses or essays or think about what, say, an expert might say. That’s not really what this is.

What I’m interested in most is simply how a story makes me, or us, feel on a personal, emotional level; how they can show us something of life. 

In brief…

Think of Reading Alice & Others as a place where you can come, sit, read and be for a while. You know when you read something, and it does something to you, and you text a friend to say, ‘Oh my god, you just have to read this!’? That’s what this is. It’s me, saying that to you about someone else’s story. It’s a place to enjoy the wonder of reading. To connect with that magical feeling of when a story somehow captures in words something that has felt impossible to otherwise express. 

And finally, a little bit more about me

If you’re completely new here, then let me introduce myself a little.

I’m Huma Qureshi, the author of four books, including

• the novel Playing Games,

• the short story collection Things We Do Not Tell The People We Love (long listed for The Jhalak Prize Book of The Year and The Edge Hill Prize for excellence in a single authored short story collection.)

• and the memoir How We Met: A Memoir of Love and Other Misadventures

My short story The Jam Maker won the Harper’s Bazaar Short Story Prize in 2020. Other stories of mine have been shortlisted for various awards including the Benedict Kiely Short Story Prize and the Brick Lane Bookshop Short Story Prize, which I then went on to judge in 2022.

As well as writing books, I teach writing courses (including a short story writing course) over on my website.

I’ve been writing online in various forms for nearly twenty (oh my god!) years since Blogger first existed. For the last several years, I’ve been writing monthly letters called Dear Huma. Dear Huma is an agony aunt style newsletter, different to the writing you’ll find here, whereby I respond to subscribers’ questions, problems and dilemmas on writing and life.

For now, you won’t find Dear Huma on Substack but I have shared some past letters, so you can get a taste of it. If you’d like to, you can sign up to it separately here.

What else, outside of writing and reading? I live in north London in a sixties house. I love interiors and had a lot of fun renovating our home (it’s been in Elle Decoration and House & Garden). I happen to be the mother of three young boys, all under ten. If you’d like to, you can read more about me here and follow me on Instagram here.

Everything you need to know about subscribing

My online writing has remained free for as long as I’ve been writing, because I’ve self-funded all of it for decades. It has always mattered to me that people can read my words and I'm thrilled that there are now so many of you reading.

After receiving my first generous pledges, I decided to make Reading Alice & Others a subscription-based publication in early 2024. It’s been such a delight to know that a small but significant (to me!) number of readers feel that what I do here is worth something to them too. Each monthly post takes me several hours and often days of writing, and it is incredibly rewarding to know that my posts and notes on short stories matter to my paid subscribers.

So, if you find that my notes on short stories speak to you, move you in some way or just shine a light on short story writing, and the power of short stories, and perhaps teach you something new about the craft or otherwise make you think about life a tiny bit differently in the brief time that you are with me here, then please do consider supporting the work that I do here with a paid subscription. Everything I write here comes very much from my heart. With a paid subscription you’ll get full access to my archive of notes on short stories; my posts will go behind a paywall two weeks after publication.

And if you can’t subscribe at this time, then please could you simply read my posts, open my emails, like or leave comments and share Reading Alice & Others so I might reach others who might not otherwise find me? It would mean so much to me.

Thank you, so, so much.

Everyone, as always, is very welcome here. 

With love,

Huma

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