PEN/O.Henry Prize Stories 2009


Book Description

A collection of the twenty best contemporary short stories selected by series editor Laura Furman from hundreds of literary magazines, The PEN/O. Henry Prize Stories 2009 features unforgettable tales in settings as diverse as post-war Vietnam, a luxurious seaside development in Cape Town, an Egyptian desert village, and a permanently darkened New York City. Also included are essays from the eminent jurors on their favorite stories, observations from the winners on what inspired them, and an extensive resource list of magazines. From the Trade Paperback edition.




PEN/O. Henry Prize Stories 2011


Book Description

The PEN/O. Henry Prize Stories 2011 contains twenty unforgettable stories selected from hundreds of literary magazines. The winning tales take place in such far-flung locales as Madagascar, Nantucket, a Midwestern meth lab, Antarctica, and a post-apocalyptic England, and feature a fascinating array of characters: aging jazzmen, avalanche researchers, a South African wild child, and a mute actor in silent films. Also included are essays from the eminent jurors on their favorite stories, observations from the winners on what inspired them, and an extensive resource list of magazines. Your Fate Hurtles Down at You Jim Shepard Diary of an Interesting Year Helen Simpson Melinda Judy Doenges Nightblooming Kenneth Calhoun The Restoration of the Villa Where Tibor Kálmán Once Lived Tamas Dobozy Ice Lily Tuck How to Leave Hialeah Jennine Capó Crucet The Junction David Means Pole, Pole Susan Minot Alamo Plaza Brad Watson The Black Square Chris Adrian Nothing of Consequence Jane Delury The Rules Are the Rules Adam Foulds The Vanishing American Leslie Parry Crossing Mark Slouka Bed Death Lori Ostlund Windeye Brian Evenson Sunshine Lynn Freed Never Come Back Elizabeth Tallent Something You Can’t Live Without Matthew Neill Null For author interviews, photos, and more, go to www.ohenryprizestories.com A portion of the proceeds from this book will go to support the PEN Readers & Writers Literary Outreach Program. From the Trade Paperback edition.




This Is Not Your City


Book Description

Eleven women confront dramas both every-day and outlandish in Caitlin Horrocks’ This Is Not Your City. In stories as darkly comic as they are unflinching, people isolated by geography, emotion, or circumstance cut imperfect paths to peace—they have no other choice. A Russian mail-order bride in Finland is rendered silent by her dislocation and loss of language; the mother of a severely disabled boy writes him postcards he'll never read on a cruise ship held hostage by pirates; and an Iowa actuary wanders among the reincarnations of those she's known in her 127 lives. Horrocks’ women find no simple escapes, and their acts of faith and acts of imagination in making do are as shrewd as they are surprising.




The PEN O. Henry Prize Stories 2012


Book Description

The PEN/O. Henry Prize Stories 2012 gathers twenty of the best short stories of the year, selected from thousands published in literary magazines. These remarkable stories explore the boundaries of the imagination in settings as various as an army training camp in China, the salt mines of Detroit, a divided Balkan town, and the eye of a hurricane. Also included are essays from the eminent jurors on their favorite stories, observations from the winners on what inspired them, and an extensive resource list of magazines.




The Bigness of the World


Book Description

Set among such divergent places as a small-town in Minnesota, an Albuquerque airport, A Belizean café and a hotel swimming pool in Java, Ostlund's Flannery O'Connor Award (2008) winning debut collection depicts sexually and socially repressed Americans. Men and women who wind up feeling displaced when they fail to escape the influence of their past; ineffectual parents, fathers and lovers who disappear, teachers who struggle to connect with their students, and lifelong obsessions with language.




The O. Henry Prize Stories 2018


Book Description

The O. Henry Prize Stories 2018 contains twenty prize-winning stories chosen from thousands published in literary magazines over the previous year. The winning stories come from a mix of established writers and emerging voices, and are uniformly breathtaking. They are accompanied by essays from the eminent jurors on their favorites, observations from the winning writers on what inspired their stories, and an extensive resource list of magazines that publish short fiction. "The Tomb of Wrestling," Jo Ann Beard, Tin House "Counterblast," Marjorie Celona, The Southern Review "Nayla," Youmna Chlala, Prairie Schooner "Lucky Dragon," Viet Dinh, Ploughshares "Stop ’n’ Go," Michael Parker, New England Review "Past Perfect Continuous," Dounia Choukri, Chicago Quarterly Review "Inversion of Marcia," Thomas Bolt, n+1 "Nights in Logar," Jamil Jan Kochai, A Public Space "How We Eat," Mark Jude Poirier, Epoch "Deaf and Blind," Lara Vapnyar, The New Yorker "Why Were They Throwing Bricks?," Jenny Zhang, n+1 "An Amount of Discretion," Lauren Alwan, The Southern Review "Queen Elizabeth," Brad Felver, One Story "The Stamp Collector," Dave King, Fence "More or Less Like a Man," Michael Powers, The Threepenny Review "The Earth, Thy Great Exchequer, Ready Lies," Jo Lloyd, Zoetrope "Up Here," Tristan Hughes, Ploughshares "The Houses That Are Left Behind," Brenda Walker, The Kenyon Review "We Keep Them Anyway," Stephanie A. Vega, The Threepenny Review "Solstice," Anne Enright, The New Yorker Prize Jury for 2018: Fiona McFarlane, Ottessa Moshfegh, Elizabeth Tallent




Nowtrends


Book Description

Fiction. Asian American Studies. In the stories in Karl Taro Greenfeld's NOWTRENDS, a reporter is sent to Chengdu, China, to interview a young, drug-addled starlet and finds that a fellow journalist with questionable political ties has been imprisoned; a struggling, Japanese artist is asked by government officials to invent a cartoon character that will prove as popular as Disney's Mickey Mouse; and a man carries 2100 milliliters of his own urine as he encounters heckling youths, Meg Whitman, and his father, who may or may not be dead. Greenfeld writes beautifully crafted stories with an authority, humor, and confidence reminiscent of Bret Easton Ellis, Phillip Roth, and Ernest Hemingway. His stories have been chosen for inclusion in Best American Short Stories 2009 and The PEN/O. Henry Prize Stories 2012.




The O. Henry Prize Stories 100th Anniversary Edition (2019)


Book Description

Now celebrating its centenary, this prestigious annual anthology gathers the twenty best new short stories published in the previous year. An Anchor Books Original. The O. Henry Prize Stories 2019--continuing a century-long tradition of cutting-edge literary excellence--contains twenty prize-winning stories chosen from the thousands published in magazines over the previous year. The winning writers are an impressive mix of celebrated names and new, emerging voices. Their stories evoke lives both near and distant, in settings ranging from Jamaica, Houston, and Hawaii to a Turkish coal mine and a drought-ridden Northwestern farm, and feature an engaging array of characters, including Laotian refugees, a Colombian kidnap victim, an eccentric Irish schoolteacher, a woman haunted by a house that cleans itself, and a strangely long-lived rabbit. The uniformly breathtaking stories are accompanied by essays from the eminent jurors on their favorites, observations from the winning writers on what inspired them, and an extensive resource list of magazines. List of 2019 winners: Tessa Hadley John Keeble Moira McCavana Rachel Kondo Sarah Shun-lien Bynum Stephanie Reents Alexia Arthurs Valerie O’Riordan Patricia Engel Kenan Orhan Sarah Hall Bryan Washington Isabella Hammad Weike Wang Caoilinn Hughes Souvankham Thammavongsa Liza Ward Doua Thao Alexander MacLeod John Edgar Wideman Prize Jurors 2019: Lynn Freed, Elizabeth Strout, Lara Vapynar




Reasons for and Advantages of Breathing


Book Description

"Lydia Peelle has given us a collection of stories so artfully constructed and deeply imagined they read like classics. It marks the beginning of what will surely be a long and beautiful career." —Ann Patchett In Reasons for and Advantages of Breathing, Lydia Peelle brings together eight brilliant stories—two of which won Pushcart Prizes and one of which won an O. Henry Prize—that peer straight into the human heart. In startling and original prose, she examines lives derailed by the loss of a vital connection to the land and to the natural world of which they are a part. Reasons for and Advantages of Breathing conveys an almost Faulknerian ache for the pre-modern South, for a landscape and a way of life lost to the ravages of money and technology.




Siege 13


Book Description

2012 Rogers Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize — Winner 2012 Governor General’s Literary Award — Finalist, English-Language Fiction In December of 1944, the Red Army entered Budapest to begin one of the bloodiest sieges of the Second World War. By February, the siege was over, but its effects were to be felt for decades afterward. Siege 13 is a collection of thirteen linked stories about this terrible time in history, both its historical moment, but also later, as a legacy of silence, haunting, and trauma that shadows the survivors. Set in both Budapest before and after the siege, and in the present day – in Canada, the U.S., and parts of Europe – Siege 13 traces the ripple effect of this time on characters directly involved, and on their friends, associates, sons, daughters, grandchildren, and adoptive countries. Written by one of this country’s best and most internationally recognized short story authors – the story "The Restoration of the Villa Where Tibor Kallman Once Lived" won the 2011 O. Henry Prize for short fiction – Siege 13 is an intelligent, emotional, and absorbing cycle of stories about war, family, loyalty, love and redemption.