{"id":88968,"date":"2015-08-20T11:10:41","date_gmt":"2015-08-20T15:10:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?p=88968"},"modified":"2015-08-20T12:06:14","modified_gmt":"2015-08-20T16:06:14","slug":"sheila-heti-on-the-middle-stories","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2015\/08\/20\/sheila-heti-on-the-middle-stories\/","title":{"rendered":"Sheila Heti on <i>The Middle Stories<\/i>"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/4fJ6AFcdh6A\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>Inspired by our famous Writers at Work interviews, \u201c<strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/myfirsttime\" target=\"_blank\">My First Time<\/a><\/strong>\u201d is a series of short videos about how writers got their start. Created by the filmmakers Tom Bean, Casey Brooks, and Luke Poling, each video is a portrait of the artist as a beginner\u2014and a look at the creative process, in all its joy, abjection, delusion, and euphoria.<\/p>\n<p>Today\u2019s featured writer is <strong>Sheila Heti<\/strong>, whose first collection, <em><u><a href=\"http:\/\/www.indiebound.org\/book\/9781936365906\" target=\"_blank\">The Middle Stories<\/a><\/u><\/em>, appeared in 2001. <span class=\"aBn\" tabindex=\"0\" data-term=\"goog_842421311\"><span class=\"aQJ\">Earlier this week<\/span><\/span>, we had <strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2015\/08\/18\/tao-lin-on-bed\/\" target=\"_blank\">Tao Lin<\/a><\/strong> discuss\u00a0<em>Bed,<\/em> his 2007 debut.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cMy First Time\u201d will return with a new set of authors, including\u00a0<strong>Ben Lerner\u00a0<\/strong>and\u00a0<strong>Donald Antrim<\/strong>, in a few months. In the meantime, you can watch the first set of \u201cMy First Time\u201d interviews, published in May:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2015\/05\/29\/christine-schutt-on-nightwork\/\"><strong>Christine Schutt<\/strong><\/a> on <em>Nightwork<\/em>, her first collection of stories<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/tag\/branden-jacobs-jenkins\/\"><strong>Branden Jacobs-Jenkins<\/strong><\/a> on his play <em>Neighbors<\/em><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2015\/05\/27\/gabrielle-bell-on-her-book-of-series\/\"><strong>Gabrielle Bell<\/strong><\/a> on\u00a0<em>The Book of &#8230;<\/em> series, her early cartoons<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2015\/05\/26\/j-robert-lennon-on-the-light-of-the-falling-stars\/\"><strong>J. Robert Lennon<\/strong><\/a> on his debut novel, <em>The Light of Falling Stars<\/em><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Inspired by our famous Writers at Work interviews, \u201cMy First Time\u201d is a series of short videos about how writers got their start. Created by the filmmakers Tom Bean, Casey Brooks, and Luke Poling, each video is a portrait of the artist as a beginner\u2014and a look at the creative process, in all its joy, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":38,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[18205],"tags":[18209,873,18232,1132,7906,18206,2824,4608,7845,19188,7905,7214],"class_list":["post-88968","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-my-first-time","tag-casey-brooks","tag-college","tag-debuts","tag-interviews","tag-luke-poling","tag-my-first-time","tag-sheila-heti","tag-shoplifting","tag-short-stories","tag-the-middle-stories","tag-tom-bean","tag-videos"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin v25.4 (Yoast SEO v25.4) - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Watch: Sheila Heti on Writing Her First Story Collection<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"For our My First Time series, Heti discusses \u201cThe Middle Stories,\u201d her 2001 debut.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2015\/08\/20\/sheila-heti-on-the-middle-stories\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Sheila Heti on The Middle Stories by Dan Piepenbring\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"August 20, 2015 \u2013 Inspired by our famous Writers at Work interviews, \u201cMy First Time\u201d is a series of short videos about how writers got their start. 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