Portrait of a Killer
Carrie has finally ditched both drugs and her violent boyfriend. Is it time to get rid of her gun, too?
February 13, 2004
Most Significant Events
– and their starting dates in the lives of our characters
His Last and First Breath
Jonathan has to face his survivor’s guilt from the Iraq war 15 years earlier. And his attempts to find peace may just end up destroying his family …
October 7, 2018
Boats Against The Current
What would you do if you had ruined the first meeting with someone who could have been your best friend?
December 15, 1995
That Which Cannot Be Broken
When Carrie is a witness to bikers assaulting a man, she has to make yet another choice about life or death.
September 7, 2003
Like Blood In A Darkroom
Carrie, Lin, Lars and Alan all meet to celebrate New Year’s Eve in an isolated holiday house half a year after high school.
December 1, 1997
Warriors
Jon works hard to prevent a young man from juvenile detention, but begins to doubt his own motives.
May 1, 2011
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!