I was fortunate enough to participate in the Boston Book Festival this past weekend, where I sat on a panel alongside authors Brendan Mathews and Steve Yarbrough. Jessica Keener was our fantastic moderator, and we spoke about short stories and novels, how one influenced the other, how they were similar, different, both in writing and in consumption.

Steve mentioned one of his heroes, William Trevor, and it so happened that I’d picked up one of Trevor’s collections the previous weekend – one I’d never read before. After one stories, I was reminded of how brilliant Trevor is, and how much I love short stories. I’d be hard pressed to name a novel I consider “perfect” – they’re too bulky, too messy, too baggy here or there. But short stories, I find, achieve perfection in ways novels cannot. (Immediately, I can think of Milan Kundera’s “The Hitchhiker,” Adam Haslett’s “Notes from my Biographer” as well as so many from Carver, Trevor, Elizabeth Strout).

It so happened that the keynote speaker for the BBF was Elizabeth Strout, out with her brand new collection, “Olive, Again,” and it so happened that this event was taking place mere minutes after our panel finished, just across the street. “Should I go?” I asked my husband, who was with our younger son, out by the river, enjoying the beautiful fall weather and watching boat races at Head of the Charles. I wanted to be with them. “Of course you should go,” he said. “Isn’t she, like, your favorite author?” Elizabeth Strout is, in fact, one of my favorite authors. I had seen her at an event many years ago in Harvard Square. At that time, I’d barely started my novel, but I remember an audience member (a writer, presumably) asking, “What do you do when you hit a block?” She’d answered, after a moment of consideration, “Write through it. You have to keep writing. It doesn’t matter what you write, just write through it.” During the course of writing EHIB, I hit many of those blocks. I remembered her words. It helped.

This time, there was a lot of talk about stories, about Strout’s characters. It’s my belief that Elizabeth Strout is brilliant in a way I will never be, that she notices and understands people in a way that most of us simply do not. She has an innate curiosity about human nature that I have to consciously cultivate, but listening her talk with Andre Dubus (her interviewer) was inspiring. It made me look back to the “small moments” in the lives around me (“small lives” – a term she hates, but I suppose it just means “ordinary lives” as opposed to lives of the rich and famous or infamous). There are many. There are many I’d like to write about.

Last night, I started reading the stories in Olive, Again. Brendan Mathews had mentioned that a great story is unsettling. That it shakes you for a moment and you have to wait a little while, until that feeling subsides, before picking up another. That’s how I felt about Strout’s new stories. Each one, so shattering. As a writer, I think, this is what I aspire to. I’ll never reach that place, but I have to try.