Tag: best american short stories

    • Short Stories and Literary Journals: The Resources

      If you’re starting out and can’t tell your Chekhov from your Gogol, an excellent place to begin is to read a historical and taxonomical evaluation of the modern short story. Luckily for you, it’s dealt with in excellent detail in William Boyd’s article, “A Short History of the Short Story.” Over the years, the books…

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    • Best American Short Stories: Part 6

      Pre-1978 The Best American Short Story series had a single editor. For decades, from 1915 to 1941, Edward O’Brien fulfilled this role. After his death, Martha Foley took over. Raymond Carver mentions Foley’s importance for American short fiction during his superb 1983 interview with The Paris Review: INTERVIEWER Is it true—a friend of yours told…

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    • Best American Short Stories: Part 5

      The Best American Short Stories 1988 was a strange collection of work. From Raymond Carver’s “Errand” (a story of almost all summary and filled with a heavy dose of biographical material taken from Henry Troyat’s Chekhov) to Majorie Sandor’s enigmatic “Still Life,” there was a wide berth of subject matter, character, and thematic emphasis. Interestingly,…

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    • Best American Short Stories: Part Four

      A quick post on the latest volume I digested and consumed. The Best American Short Stories 1999: Standout stories: Ha Jin’s “In the Kindergarten,” Tim Gautreaux’s “The Piano Tuner,” and Junot Diaz’s “The Sun, the Moon, the Stars.” Overall, there were some strong pieces within this edition. Although, all things considered, I felt the chosen…

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    • Best American Short Stories: Part Three

      The first two posts charting my odyssey through thirty volumes of the Best American series can be found here and here. While reading another one of the books, I came across a recent survey by VIDA, an organization that deals with women in the arts. VIDA completed a statistical analysis of the gender discrepancies in…

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    • Best American Short Stories: Part Two

      In my first post on the Best American Short Story series, I outlined my plan to read the last thirty editions. I’m reading the books for craft, the nuts-and-bolts of (short) storytelling, and to read some damn-good fiction. As I mentioned in my previous post, many of the magazines that submitted to the series are…

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    • Best American Short Stories

      For the first part of this summer — before I start work at a temporary Johns Hopkins’ job — I’m reading through multiple Best American Short Story anthologies. Each volume contains twenty stories in their entirety and mentions one hundred other distinguished stories of the past year. Around three thousand published stories are whittled down…

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    • Hip Literary Journals

      “Cooler than cool, the pinnacle of what is ‘it’.” — Urban Dictionary The realm of literary journals that may be termed “hip” was recently brought to my attention by George Bowering. George, who I presume is the one noted here, wrote about my list of best journals (see post here) were “square.” I agree that…

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