Read more
Zusatztext “Those who still cling to the promise of the short story can be glad that there is still someone willing to do the heavy lifting.” —Los Angeles Times Informationen zum Autor Laura Furman, series editor of The O. Henry Prize Stories since 2003, is the winner of fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts for her fiction. The author of seven books, including her recent story collection The Mother Who Stayed , she taught writing for many years at the University of Texas at Austin. She lives in Central Texas. Klappentext The O. Henry Prize Stories 2016 gathers twenty of the best short stories of the year! selected from thousands published in literary magazines. The winning stories range in setting from Japan at the outset of World War II to a remote cabin in the woods of Wyoming! and the characters that inhabit them range from a misanthropic survivor of an apocalyptic flood to a unicorn hidden in a suburban house. Whether fantastical or realistic! gothic or lyrical! the stories here are uniformly breathtaking. They are accompanied by the editor's introduction! essays from the eminent jurors on their favorites! observations from the winning writers on what inspired them! and an extensive resource list of magazines. CONTENTS "Irises!" Elizabeth Genovise "The Mongerji Letters!" Geetha Iyer "Narrator!" Elizabeth Tallent "Bonus Baby!" Joe Donnelly "Divergence!" David H. Lynn "A Simple Composition!" Shruti Swamy "Storm Windows!" Charles Haverty "Train to Harbin!" Asako Serizawa "Dismemberment!" Wendell Berry "Exit Zero!" Marie-Helene Bertino "Cigarettes!" Sam Savage "Temples!" Adrienne Celt "Safety!" Lydia Fitzpatrick "Bounty!" Diane Cook "A Single Deliberate Thing!" Zebbie Watson "The Crabapple Tree!" Robert Coover "Winter 1965!" Frederic Tuten "They Were Awake!" Rebecca Evanhoe "Slumming!" Ottessa Moshfegh "Happiness!" Ron Carlson The Jurors on Their Favorites: Molly Antopol! Peter Cameron! Lionel Shriver The Writers on Their Work Publications Submitted For author interviews! photos! and more! go to www.ohenryprizestories.com Introduction This year, as always, when the reading got under way for The O. Henry Prize Stories 2016 , the stories in the just-published 2015 collection whispered in my ear that this would be the year when I wouldn’t find another twenty worthy of succeeding them. The haunting prediction held for a while, and then the first right one appeared. This year, Ron Carlson’s “Happiness” reassured me that once again there were more wonderful stories to discover for The O. Henry Prize Stories 2016 . A story with that title might be greeted with skepticism. Happiness? Really? The word’s in our Declaration of Independence but most of us can’t say what it means to be happy, though we know the feeling when it’s there and we miss it when it’s gone. Carlson’s characters—the narrator, his brother, and two sons—are meeting at the family’s mountain cabin in October to secure the place for the winter. When the narrator and his son stop for the night in Wyoming, it’s five degrees above zero and there are pickup trucks parked in front of Wally’s, home of the Wally Burger. The narrator knows that the “smart shepherds and collies” that would in warmer weather be in the trucks are in the motel’s warm rooms. Game three of the World Series is on TV. The narrator lays out these simple and ordinary conditions as if he were describing a moment in paradise. The unhurried pace of the narration speaks of happiness as the narrator luxuriates in his modest way. He isn’t about to rush anything, not his descriptions of the weather, land, trees, water, trout, or deer. Even the cabin’s copper Levelor blinds have their moment. Happiness might glow and inspire, in memory and in its p...
