SOURCE: Dybek, Stuart. “On Short Short Fiction.” Michigan Quarterly Review 26, no. 4 (fall 1987): 723-25.

In the following essay, Dybek explains the appeal of the short-short story form.

I wonder how many other writers have, as I do, tucked away somewhere in files or boxes or trunks unopened for years, unpublished stories and poems written by friends. Or, for that matter, stories and poems that were published, perhaps in some obscure, poorly circulated, little magazine that has long since folded and been forgotten. I'm thinking especially of work by people who for any multitude of reasons no longer write, or who have turned to other kinds of writing, yet whose early work we privately save, not merely out of friendship or nostalgia, but because something in the work itself seemed promising. I'd guess many writers have such collections. It might even make an interesting feature in a magazine to ask...