Master short story craftswoman Lydia Davis was recently awarded the 2013 Man Booker International Prize!
Davis is best known for her rich and precise stories, sometimes told in as few as two sentences. As Dave Eggers said, Davis "blows the roof off of so many of our assumptions about what constitutes short fiction." We're honored to have this literary expert on our list.
Read more about the judges' decision on TheManBookerPrize.com.
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Kirkus Reviews posted a great article, "Writing History, but with the Heart," about writer Amber Dermont's first short story collection, DAMAGE CONTROL, following her captivating debut novel, THE STARBOARD SEA.
"Similar to THE STARBOARD SEA, Dermont excavates the quietly tragic lives of her disparate constellation of characters, each one of them losing and collecting parts of themselves during the course of each narrative."
Dermont talks about the places that inspired her, biographies she's obsessed with, and how narrative and structure can take her years to set. You'll also learn about her storytelling priorities and other projects she's working on.
Read the full article on KirkusReviews.com! [...]
Writers and short story enthusiasts, rejoice! The Paris Review is out to celebrate the power of brief stories with their new compendium, OBJECT LESSONS: The Paris Review Presents the Art of the Short Story.
The exceptionally cool thing about this anthology is that the contents (all originally printed in The Paris Review) were selected and are introduced by twenty contemporary authors. It's an excellent resource for writers, students, or any of your patrons who want to understand fiction from a writer’s point of view.
"This anthology of short stories selected by some of the great practitioners of our time is bound to be read and studies for years to come." -Library Journal (starred review)
"The editors call this a guide for young writers and readers interested in literary technique, and the book achieves that purpose while also serving as a tribute to the role the Paris Review has played in maintaining the diversity of the short story form. The collection reminds us that good stories are always whispering into each other’s ears." -Publishers Weekly
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Talia's at the Boston Book Buzz and most of the Academic Marketing Department is out today, so I'm creeping around the 21st floor like a moody sphinx in a defunct labyrinth and/or a manticore demon looking for someone to chat with between circles seven and eight (violence and fraud, respectively) of the Inferno/breakroom.
Won't someone come talk to me about something? ...Anything?! I can make you coffee! I’m better at making up riddles than Bilbo! I have things to say about the weather! Time-sensitive things!!
Do I sound familiar? If you’re smiling and shaking your head right now thinking, "Been there, girl," well then have I got the compendium for you: THE WEIRD edited by Ann and Jeff VanderMeer!
This anthology of peculiar short stories is here to keep you (and, more urgently, me) occupied over those dreary co-worker-less lunches and solitary afternoon coffee breaks. In the strange company of Franz Kafka, Neil Gaiman, Michael Chabon, Daphne Du Maurier, Algernon Blackwood, George R.R. Martin, and so many more, you may not feel more human, but you will feel less isolated... or will you?!
Seriously, someone come say hi. I'm losing it up here.
Not convinced by my manticorian ramblings? Publishers Weekly gave THE WEIRD a starred review and said,
"Ambitious in the extreme, the Vandermeers’ latest genre-blurring endeavor, which compiles 110 weird stories from the past century, is one of the most far-reaching and inclusive speculative anthologies to ever see print."
They also called it "a deeply affectionate and respectful history of speculative fiction’s blurry edges, and its stunning diversity, excellent quality, and extremely reasonable price point [...] will entice a wide variety of readers—including those who think they don’t like 'weird.'"
And how did the editors pick these delightful tales of strange and dark deeds?
We read over 6 million words in order to select the stories for The Weird. #torchat
— Ann VanderMeer (@AnnVanderMeer) May 16, 2012
Whoa! And what was the—how should I put this?—main thread of interior weird?
@WmHenryMorris Yes, Kafka is the main thread of interior weird in our antho. Stories where you r already embedded. #TORCHAT
— Jeff VanderMeer (@jeffvandermeer) May 16, 2012
I have goose bumps already!
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The American West has long been a place where myth and legend have flourished. Where men stood tall and lived rough. But that West is no more. Shann Ray explores and redfines this changed landscape in AMERICAN MASCULINE, the 2010 Bakeless Prize for Fiction-winner.
"Think Hemingway or Jim Harrison, and know that Ray's collection is the deserving winner of the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference Bakeless Prize." —Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
"Ray's collection has an unsettling power as his roughened characters incrementally come to terms with their humanity, fallibility, and their realized capacity for atonement. This is a highly accomplished and intensely lyrical debut." —Publishers Weekly (starred review)
"Ray’s taut, fragmented prose evokes the fragility of the male ego in stories so layered with tenderness and violence, hope and despair, that together they form a true and pure depiction of sorrow and a primer for forgiveness." —Booklist (starred review)
"AMERICAN MASCULINE does what the best fiction should: it breaks open the human heart with honesty and clarity, showing us the bad that exists alongside, and is often indistinguishable from, the good." —Shelf Awareness (starred review)
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