Ben Shattuck

Before we begin, I want to tell you about an experience I had this week leading up to this Writers at Work interview. For the first time, I watched a movie as I was reading the short stories upon which it was based, not simultaneously, of course. I read the short stories in the evening, watched the film in the afternoon, read the short stories again, then watched the film one more time.

The short stories, two in a collection of 12, and the film were written by the same author, Ben Shattuck, who is our guest today. THE HISTORY OF SOUND is the name of the collection and the film, and they share more than a title. I found Ben's interpretation of his prose to be uncanny, not just on plot points, but on its ambiance, its pacing, its color, and so on. I was deeply engaged in both, not quite hypnotized, but residing deeply within the words and images.

Ben Shattuck is a writer and painter from coastal Massachusetts, a graduate and former teaching-writing fellow of the Iowa Writers' Workshop. His writing has appeared in the Harvard Review, The New Republic, the Paris Review Daily, and other publications. His paintings have been exhibited in galleries in New York, Boston, and Williamstown, Massachusetts, and the New Bedford Art Museum.

His debut short story, “Edwin Chase of Nantucket,” was selected to appear in the anthology PEN AMERICA BEST DEBUT SHORT STORIES 2017. It also appears in THE HISTORY OF SOUND collection. Ben's first book, SIX WALKS, was published by Tin House in 2022. That memoir tracks the author's retracing of six walks taken by Henry David Thoreau. His second book, THE HISTORY OF SOUND: STORIES, was published by Viking in 2024. The film THE HISTORY OF SOUND opens in the US on September 12.