As holidays come around, whether it’s Christmas, Thanksgiving, New Years, or even Valentine’s, when you know there’s some chance chocolate will be involved in your day, you may start to feel some anxiety about how you’ll make it through with your diet intact.

The publication of Short Story America Anthology, Volume I, marks another major milestone in Beaufort resident Tim Johnston’s quest to revive the great American literary art form.

When Beaufort writer Tim Johnston launched his website Short Story America a couple of years ago, I interviewed him about his mission to rescue a dying literary art form.

“The short story didn’t lose popularity because authors forgot how to write stories that entertain, move and matter,” Johnston told me during that conversation.

“Scrooge was better than his word. He did it all, and infinitely more . . . He became as good a friend, as good a master, as good a man as the good old City knew, or any other good old city, town, or borough in the good old world.”

– Charles Dickens, "A Christmas Carol"

Frank Roberts’ Lady’s Island Oyster Farm brings a sustainably harvested oyster to the Lowcountry

“As I ate the oysters with their strong taste of the sea and their faint metallic taste that the cold white wine washed away, leaving only the sea taste and the succulent texture, and as I drank their cold liquid from each shell and washed it down with the crisp taste of the wine, I lost the empty feeling and began to be happy and to make plans.”

- Ernest Hemingway, A Moveable Feast