Night Lights: Stories and Essays from Northwest Authors Guaranteed to Keep you Up Past Bedtime

by Tom Robbins, Karen Fisher, August Wilson

Night Lights is a collection of 22 shorts stories from some of the most accomplished Northwest Writers. Each year authors such as Tom Robbins, Karen Fisher and August Wilson create an original short story for Humanities Washington's annual fundraiser, Bedtime Stories. This volume represents the first printing of many of these stories for everyone to enjoy.

Genres: Short Stories

218 pages, Paperback

First published October 8, 2010

About the author

Thomas Eugene Robbins was an American novelist. His most notable works are "seriocomedies" (also known as "comedy dramas"). Robbins lived in La Conner, Washington from 1970, where he wrote nine of his books. His 1976 novel Even Cowgirls Get the Blues was adapted into the 1993 film version by Gus Van Sant. His last work, published in 2014, was Tibetan Peach Pie, a self-declared "un-memoir".

Reviews

[Trux]

I love this sweet, intimate collection of what are basically bedtime stories. Love that each also works as a personal, local introduction to the authors. Love that a lot of them take place around where I've lived my whole life, too. I also love that they don't feel too fancy - they're very welcoming, and would feel comforting hanging out on a shelf to return to over and over again so now I want to buy this after reading it on loan from the library.

There were some little editing problems (typos, missing little words, etc.) so when I got to page 182, for example, and read that Brenda's step-mother, Jessie, was also called a "yarb doctor", I was confused since everywhere else Jessie was her step-GRANDmother, and not sure of she was actually a yarD doctor or if yarb was truly the intended word and some combination of yard and herb. Stuff like that kind of drives me batshit crazy, but whatever. It's humble and modest and maybe makes the stories even more nutritious.

[TT]

Picked it up out of a Little Free Library because I saw Rebecca Brown was featured in the collection. Some of the stories would probably would have been more enjoyable if they were read in front of a live audience.

Favorites include "Night Hawks" by Charles Johnson
"Beautification" by Brenda Peterson
"Mud Night" by Karen Fisher
"The Evolution of Darkness" by Rebecca Brown
"How Hilda Grovenshire Ate Her Way to Fame" by August Wilson
"Food for the Gods" Bharti Kirchner

[Cindy Veneris]

Some good, atmospheric tales in here!