Being curious, learning from all of our experiences, is one of our most pleasing traits as human beings.

In this series we examine particular facets of ourselves and, with the aid of many classic authors, delve into characters and stories that not only entertain us, but inform us on how short stories can help us both deal and understand issues that touch and weave into our lives with the words and narratives of many wise talents.

In this volume our authors have a fine flip side to the cliché that most of them are starving and lonely figures trying to eek out a living writing in their lonely garrets. If they were then they are using those experiences to explore just how the characters in their narratives cope with their lives cut off from wide and varied social interactions.