Most Significant Events
– and their starting dates in the lives of our characters
Shade of the Morning Sun is ...
an online literary project
an ever-growing collection of linked short stories
a century-long chronicle of three generations in the same family
Meet the creator
Christopher Marcus
Reflections about ...
Online literature
“In general, as I have taken to saying to colleagues suspicious of all the buzz about digital technologies, the stake for literary studies in the digital age is not first of all technological. It is to follow the living language of human thought, hope, love, desire—and hate too—wherever it goes and wherever it has the capacity to be literary, even if the form, style, or grammar of such literariness does not always conform to canonical standards.”
– professor Alan Liu, “From reading to social computing” in Literary Studies in the Digital Age – An Evolving Anthology
Short stories
“[Virginia Woolf] said of photography, ‘Isn’t it odd how much more one sees in a photograph than in real life?’ This gives us, I think, a clue to the enduring power and appeal of the short story – short stories are snapshots of the human condition and of human nature, and when they work well, and work on us, we are given the rare chance to see in them more ‘than in real life.’.”
– William Boyd, author of Any Human Heart and Brazzaville Beach
Linked short stories
“I no longer feel attracted to the well-made novel … I want to write the story that will zero in and give you intense, but not connected moments of experience. I guess that’s the way I see life. People remake themselves bit by bit and do things they don’t understand. The novel has to have a coherence which I don’t see anymore in the lives around me.”
– Alice Munro
Thanks to all the wonderful photographers who kindly made their photos available for creative commons use!