The Art of the Short Story with Author Pam Houston

Join T.J. Zark and Pam Houston as they talk about Pam's upcoming online masterclass, The Art of the Short Story, for both readers and writers hosted by the Pie of Breakfast Club. In this episode, we talk about what makes short stories great and how they can contribute to a writer's experience in approaching other work, and Pam's own success with the form of the short story.

As Pam says, “ There is so much beauty in the form of the short story, and it’s so under appreciated.” Today, we celebrate the genre and so much more.

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SHOW NOTES:

Find more on T.J. Zark The Pie For Breakfast Club https://pieforbreakfastclub.com/

Find more on Pam Houston at: https://pamhouston1.substack.com/ https://pamhouston.net/

Pam Houston is the author of the memoir Deep Creek: Finding Hope In The High Country, as well as two novels, Contents May Have Shifted and Sight Hound, two collections of short stories, Cowboys Are My Weakness and Waltzing the Cat, and a collection of essays, A Little More About Me, as well as a book of essay between Pam and environmental activist Amy Irvine, called Air Mail: Letters of Politics, Pandemics and Place. Her stories have been selected for volumes of The O. Henry Awards, The Pushcart Prize, Best American Travel Writing, and Best American Short Stories of the Century among other anthologies. She is the winner of the Western States Book Award, the WILLA Award for contemporary fiction, the Evil Companions Literary Award and several teaching awards.  She teaches in the Low Rez MFA program at the Institute of American Indian Arts, is Professor of English at UC Davis, and co-founder and creative director of the literary nonprofit Writing By Writers, which puts on between seven and ten writers gatherings per year in places as diverse as Boulder, Colorado, Tomales Bay, California and Chamonix, France. 

Pam’s passions include Icelandic Horses (especially the ones who live in Iceland, where she goes as often as possible,) Irish Wolfhounds, travel, mentoring and teaching, particularly teaching writing about the more than the human world. She lives on a homestead at 9,000 feet near the headwaters of the Rio Grande in Colorado with her husband Mike and two dogs, a quarter horse, a miniature donkey, four Icelandic ewes, four hens and a rooster. Her new book, Without Exception: Reclaiming Abortion, Personhood and Freedom, was published in September 2024.

Cowboys Are My Weakness / 1993 Waltzing the Cat / 1999 A Little More About Me / 2000 Sight Hound: A Novel /. 2006 Contents May Have Shifted: A Novel / 2012 Deep Creek: Finding Hope in the High Country / 2019 Without Exception: Reclaiming Abortion, Personhood and Freedom / 2024

@ COPYRIGHT T.J. ZARK / 2025