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This week: the first episode of a special series with international short story writers. Edna O'Brien - one of the world's great short story writers - has been writing for 30 years. Her stories are set in the heartland of Ireland, and almost always about women.

International Short Story Series, Part : Today on Writers & Company, host Eleanor Wachtel interviews British author J.G. Ballard. Along with his science fiction, J.G. Ballard is widely known for his semi-autobiographical novel The Empire Of The Sun. Third in the international short story series. Following the interview, J.G. Ballard reads "The Enormous Space," from the collection War Fever.

The first episode in a special series on Irish writers, starting with one of the best - William Trevor. His Collected Stories was named one of the best books of 1993.

This week on Writers and Company, host Eleanor Wachtel talks with Alice Munro - described as "Canada's Chekhov", "Canada's Flaubert" - you name it: a wonderful story-teller with a new book, Runaway, which is already a finalist for the 2004 Governor General's Literary Awards and winner of the Giller Prize.

This week on Writers and Company, host Eleanor Wachtel speaks with British author Tessa Hadley. She's had almost as many short stories published in the New Yorker in the last ten years as her hero, Alice Munro. Her first novel, Accidents in the Home, was described by England's Guardian newspaper as fantastically subtle, absorbing and delightful. Now Tessa Hadley has written a novel called The London Train.

Eleanor speaks with Canadian author Carol Shields about her new collection of short stories, Dressing Up for the Carnival. Then: a reading of Shields' short story "Soup du Jour" at the Toronto International Festival of Authors.

As part of CBC Radio's special series "Censor This!", Writers & Company host Eleanor Wachtel talks with two writers who know only too well the power of the word. In the Congo, Pierre Mujomba felt the repressive hand of the Mobutu regime. after one of his plays came too close to the truth, he was forced to seek asylum abroad. Novelist Shahriyār Mandanīʹpūr, from Iran, recalls the time he spent serving in the Iran-Iraq war, and the ongoing harassment he experienced as a result of his…

This week on Writers and Company, host Eleanor Wachtel talks with New York short story writer Deborah Eisenberg, whose work is so complex and evocative that she's been called the "American Alice Munro". Her latest book is Twilight of the Superheroes. This episode includes Eisenberg reading from her story "Some Other, Better Otto" at the Toronto International Festival of Authors.

Ireland has excelled in literature, winning four Nobel Prizes - which for a country of four million is some kind of record - and in the art of the short story. This week, the magic of the Irish short story, then and now - with Roddy Doyle (The Deportees), Claire Keegan (Walk the Blue Fields) and Kevin Barry (There Are Little Kingdoms).

Critically acclaimed British author Zadie Smith joined Eleanor Wachtel onstage in Toronto for an exhilarating conversation about Grand Union, her first collection of short stories.

This week, part one of our special series, "Re-imagining the Balkans: How the countries of the former Yugoslavia face their past and their future," with Bosnian novelist and journalist Muharem Bazdulj.

Interview with the award-winning American author Tobias Wolff. Best known for his memoir, This Boy's Life, and for his vivid and painfully honest account of his time in Vietnam. Wolff brings a sense of irony and moral ambiguity to his new book of short stories, The Night in Question.