Art Fiction Stories

A newly married couple surrounded by the beauty of Paris, each in their own way struggling to define what marriage could and should look like. A high school teacher confronting echoes of his past as his current love negotiates the place of art in her own life. An artist explaining why the work that should have been the pinnacle of his career fell unexpectedly flat. A rich young man exploring and painting a new landscape and perhaps creating an alternate reality as he attempts to remake his life after disappointment. An old and careworn woman confronting the city of her youth, accompanied by the rich but unsettling music of Wagner.

The five stories in Art Fiction: Stories, the first in an innovative series of collected works of art fiction from Portmay Press, were chosen for the unique way their authors “paint with words” and, whether from the perspective of the nineteenth century, the twentieth, or the twenty-first, embrace the intersections of art, life, and fiction. Each story has been paired with a work of art for the Metropolitan Museum of Art  accompanied by an insightful introduction by the editor, this volume is sure to delight and enlighten the reader.

A Point at Issue!  by Kate Chopin

Wade’s Technique by Maryann D’Agincourt

The Portrait  by Edith Wharton

A Landscape Painter by Henry James

A Wagner Matinee by Willa Cather