Legendary Writer Lorrie Moore on the "Constant Struggle" of Being an Author

It's impossible to imagine the contemporary landscape of the short story without Lorrie Moore as a central architect. Now 63, she's been writing quietly subversive, slyly witty, brilliantly crafted fiction for more than 30 years.

The wry self-awareness of her work was there from the beginning; her idiosyncratic sensibility elevated the form. Moore has authored three novels and a volume of essays, but it is her four story collections for which she's best known. About the genre she's said, "A short story is a love affair; a novel is a marriage." Now comes Collected Stories, which gathers Moore's seminal short works—what novelist Lauren Groff describes in the introduction as "a series of small explosions... so modern... they thrummed with the urgency of my own young person's anxieties and obsessions."

O's books editor, Leigh Haber, spoke with Moore about the remarkable new publication and how it feels to take a backward glance.

Is there a book that's your first love?

Read the full story on Oprah Daily: Legendary Writer Lorrie Moore on the "Constant Struggle" of Being an Author