Tom Perrotta Returns to the Short Story

09:39

December 23, 2013

Tom Perrotta's latest book is "Nine Inches," a collection of 10 stories. He's pictured at the Here & Now studios in Boston. (Rachel Rohr/Here & Now)

2013 has been a pretty big year for author Tom Perrotta: his novel "The Leftovers" has been picked up by HBO as a T.V. series, and he published "Nine Inches," his first short story collection in nineteen years.

As Perrotts tells Here & Now’s Meghna Chakrabarti, his characters' growth is the focus of much of his work in the collection: "I think what I'm showing in a lot of these stories is that simultaneous movement away from the person somebody was, to some tentative new beginning, some new relationship that is more authentic to the truth that's been revealed."

Hear the original interview and read a book excerpt

Guest

Tom Perrotta, author of “Nine Inches.”

This segment aired on December 23, 2013.