D. A. Hosek

Category: stories

  • “A Blessing of Tears”: The Story Behind the Story

    “A Blessing of Tears”: The Story Behind the Story

    My latest publication is an excerpt from the novel I’m currently querying, We, the Rescued, entitled “A Blessing of Tears.” It’s a little startling to think of how long ago I first started working on this chapter. According to my computer, the creation date for the first draft of the chapter is 20 June 2017, so…

  • “A story with a happy ending”: The story behind the story

    “A story with a happy ending”: The story behind the story

    My newest publication, an excerpt from the novel I’m querying, was published in Nebo under the title, “A story with a happy ending.” This excerpt comes from late in the book as I start wrapping up characters’ stories and focuses on Adam Cushman, an American Jewish soldier after his return to the U.S. from his army…

  • “Place de Stalingrad”: The story behind the story

    In both Paris and Brussels, there are metro stops called “Stalingrad,” a fact I found fascinating, especially since the city of Stalingrad was renamed Volgograd in the wave of de-Stalinization under Nikita Krushchev. On my last visit to Paris, I decided I had to see what was at the stop with this name so one evening…

  • “The Norton Anthology of Self-Destructive Behavior”: The story behind the story

    This story was one that unfolded itself gradually over time. It started with the title which came to me one day during a residency  for my MFA. I wrote down the title and even got so far as writing down a list of self-destructive behaviors, but put it aside for a while after that. I picked…

  • “Persistence of Memory”: The Story Behind the Story

    “Persistence of Memory” has its origins in a visit to the Salvador Dalí Museum in St Petersburg, Florida. During a tour of the exhibits, there was a painting from the same series as Dalí’s “The Persistence of Memory” and the guide said that this was about Dalí attempting to portray time flattening to a single…

  • “Saint Jude’s Medallion”: The Story Behind the Story

    The earliest version of “Saint Jude’s Medallion” came from an assignment for a class I took as an undergrad, Latinos and the Politics of Religion. We were supposed to interview an older Latino/a (the term Latinx had not yet been invented or at least had not achieved currency in the Pomona Valley of the late 80s)…

  • “Kiddush”: The Story Behind the Story

    “Kiddush” is the opening chapter of my novel in progress, We, the Rescued. The novel, in an Oulipo-esque fashion, takes its structure from the Passover Haggadah and in a sort of an ontogeny-recapitulates-philogeny fashion, the chapter takes its structure from the first prayer of the Passover Seder, the Kiddush, or blessing over wine. I took the…

  • “A Pilgrimage”: The Story Behind the Story

    “A Pilgrimage” is one of those stories that originated by reading off the page. In this instance it was a Mexican short story that I was reading in Spanish. I don’t remember the story details very well, other than being somewhat lost in the Spanish. As a consequence I began imagining the story that became “A…

  • “MeTube”: The Story Behind the Story

    The genesis of “MeTube” was an actual YouTube video, “Bride Has Massive Hair Wig Out” which initially presented itself as an actual pre-wedding video but was later revealed to be a promotional video for hair care products. Regardless of its veracity, the question that struck me about the video was, What happened after the camera turned…