Once Upon a Time: Reading 'The World Has Many Butterflies' by Curtis Sittenfeld

The story of the month: 'The World Has Many Butterflies' by Elizabeth Curtis Sittenfeld

Link to the story:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1pFjiUlXFR9sv89F1geuu6sEFjcDRzIxp/view?usp=sharing

Link to the Google Meet: https://meet.google.com/tnt-fnkp-uhp

The meeting room will open 5 minutes before the session.

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"A short story must have a single mood and every sentence must build towards it."

~ Edgar Allan Poe

Despite unwarranted reports of its demise at various times, the short story has been robust and thriving. The form itself has constantly changed, always reflecting the times it came out of, unlike the novel.

From the great short story writers – Guy de Maupassant, Anton Chekhov, Henry James, O’Henry, and Saki – we moved to the more modern writers who brought a change in the middle of the twentieth century – Flannery O’Connor and Raymond Carver were at the forefront of this.

Once Upon a Time is a session in which we try to familiarise ourselves with the world's best short stories. Shankar will read the story aloud in the session. After the reading, we will analyse it together to learn from it.

But if you can, please read the story beforehand.

THE STORY: 'The World Has Many Butterflies' by Elizabeth Curtis Sittenfeld

'The World Has Many Butterflies' is from Sittenfeld’s first short-story collection, 'You Think it, I’ll Say It', in which a man and a woman bond over a snarky game they play about others, only to reveal misunderstandings and unspoken desires.

Link to the story:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1pFjiUlXFR9sv89F1geuu6sEFjcDRzIxp/view?usp=sharing

THE AUTHOR:

Elizabeth Curtis Sittenfeld (b 1975) is an American writer. She is the author of 2 collections of short stories, 'You Think it, I’ll Say It' (2018) and 'Show Don't Tell' (2025), as well as seven novels. Her short-story collections are unified by the focus on the private thoughts people keep hidden—judgments, regrets, fantasies, and the awkwardness of social comparison.

THE HOST:

Shankar is an aspiring writer, living in Pune. He has been a lifelong reader and was bitten by the writing bug after reading books by Tobias Wolff and William Trevor. While he loves novels, especially by the Russians, he always has a particular fondness for short stories.