Woody Allen pens new short story for the New Criterion

Manhattan-based literary magazine the New Criterion has published its first ever piece of fiction in its forty-two-year history. The author may raise an eyebrow: it’s legendary and controversial filmmaker Woody Allen.

Allen has penned the short story “Breakfast Special” for the magazine’s February 2024 edition. Appropriately enough, for both the magazine and the author, it takes place in Manhattan and stars Murray Tempkin, “a slim, bespectacled thirty-year-old writer, who on a good hair day resembles a scientist or an intellectual but should the weather turn humid looks more like some kind of meshuggener.” The tale, which centers…

Manhattan-based literary magazine the New Criterion has published its first ever piece of fiction in its forty-two-year history. The author may raise an eyebrow: it’s legendary and controversial filmmaker Woody Allen.

Allen has penned the short story “Breakfast Special” for the magazine’s February 2024 edition. Appropriately enough, for both the magazine and the author, it takes place in Manhattan and stars Murray Tempkin, “a slim, bespectacled thirty-year-old writer, who on a good hair day resembles a scientist or an intellectual but should the weather turn humid looks more like some kind of meshuggener.” The tale, which centers on a meetcute gone very, very wrong, bears all of Allen’s hallmarks: neuroses, humor, romance, social awkwardness.

Allen wrote for the New Yorker magazine for many years. His last written work was 2022’s Zero Gravity, a collection of short humor, and his last movie was 2023’s Coup de chance, a French-language thriller.

You can read “Breakfast Special” here.