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Best American Short Stories
The Best American Short Stories yearly anthology is a part of ''The Best American Series'' published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. Since 1915, the BASS anthology has striven to contain the best short stories by some of the best-known writers in contemporary American literature. Edward O'Brien The series began in 1915, when Edward O'Brien edited his selection of the previous year's stories. This first edition was serialized in a magazine; however, it caught the attention of the publishing company Small, Maynard & Company, which published subsequent editions until 1926, when the title was transferred to Dodd, Mead and Company. The time appeared to be a propitious one for such a collection. The most popular magazines of the day featured short fiction prominently and frequently; the best authors were well-known and well-paid. More importantly, there was a nascent movement toward higher standards and greater experimentation among certain American writers. O'Brien capitalized on this m ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Anthology
In book publishing, an anthology is a collection of literary works chosen by the compiler; it may be a collection of plays, poems, short stories, songs or excerpts by different authors. In genre fiction, the term ''anthology'' typically categorizes collections of shorter works, such as short stories and short novels, by different authors, each featuring unrelated casts of characters and settings, and usually collected into a single volume for publication. Alternatively, it can also be a collection of selected writings (short stories, poems etc.) by one author. Complete collections of works are often called "complete works" or "" (Latin equivalent). Etymology The word entered the English language in the 17th century, from the Greek word, ἀνθολογία (''anthologic'', literally "a collection of blossoms", from , ''ánthos'', flower), a reference to one of the earliest known anthologies, the ''Garland'' (, ''stéphanos''), the introduction to which compares each of its ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
John Cheever
John William Cheever (May 27, 1912 – June 18, 1982) was an American short story writer and novelist. He is sometimes called "the Chekhov of the suburbs". His fiction is mostly set in the Upper East Side of Manhattan; the Westchester suburbs; old New England villages based on various South Shore towns around Quincy, Massachusetts, where he was born; and Italy, especially Rome. His short stories included " The Enormous Radio", "Goodbye, My Brother", " The Five-Forty-Eight", "The Country Husband", and " The Swimmer", and he also wrote five novels: ''The Wapshot Chronicle'' (National Book Award, 1958),from the Awards 50-year anniversary publications and from the Awards 60-year anniversary blog.) '' The Wapshot Scandal'' (William Dean Howells Medal, 1965), '' Bullet Park'' (1969), '' Falconer'' (1977) and a novella '' Oh What a Paradise It Seems'' (1982). His main themes include the duality of human nature: sometimes dramatized as the disparity between a character's decorous soc ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Anne Tyler
Anne Tyler (born October 25, 1941) is an American novelist, short story writer, and literary critic. She has published twenty-four novels, including ''Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant'' (1982), ''The Accidental Tourist'' (1985), and '' Breathing Lessons'' (1988). All three were finalists for the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, and ''Breathing Lessons'' won the prize in 1989. She has also won the Janet Heidinger Kafka Prize, the Ambassador Book Award, and the National Book Critics Circle Award. In 2012 she was awarded ''The Sunday Times'' Award for Literary Excellence. Tyler's twentieth novel, ''A Spool of Blue Thread'', was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize in 2015, and ''Redhead By the Side of the Road'' was longlisted for the same award in 2020. She is recognized for her fully developed characters, her "brilliantly imagined and absolutely accurate detail", her "rigorous and artful style", and her "astute and open language." Tyler has been compared to John Updike, Jane A ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
John Gardner (American Writer)
John Champlin Gardner Jr. (July 21, 1933 – September 14, 1982) was an American novelist, essayist, literary critic and university professor. He is best known for his 1971 novel ''Grendel (novel), Grendel'', a retelling of the Beowulf myth from the monster's point of view. Early life and education Gardner was born in Batavia, New York. His father was a lay preacher and dairy farmer, and his mother taught third grade at a small school in a nearby village. Both parents were fond of poetry, and would often recite their favorite poetry and poetry they wrote about life on the farm at friends' homes. Gardner was active in the Boy Scouts of America and achieved the Eagle Scout rank. As a child, Gardner attended public school and worked on his father's farm, where in April 1945, his younger brother Gilbert was killed in an accident with a cultipacker. Gardner, who was driving the tractor during the fatal accident, carried guilt for his brother's death throughout his life, suffering nigh ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Hortense Calisher
Hortense Calisher (December 20, 1911 – January 13, 2009) was an American writer of fiction and the second female president of the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Biography Personal life Born in New York City, and a graduate of Hunter College High School (1928) and Barnard College (1932), Calisher was the daughter of a young German Jewish immigrant mother and a somewhat older Jewish father from Virginia whose family she described as "volcanic to meditative to fruitfully dull and bound to produce someone interested in character, society, and time". In 1972, she was a part of the ''Ms''. magazine campaign: “We Have Had Abortions.” The campaign called for an end to "archaic laws" limiting reproductive freedom and encouraged women to share their stories and take action. Writing style Calisher involved her closely investigated, penetrating characters in complicated plotlines that unfold with shocks and surprises in allusive, nuanced language with a distinctively elegiac ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Stanley Elkin
Stanley Lawrence Elkin (May 11, 1930 – May 31, 1995) was an American novelist, short story writer, and essayist. His extravagant, satirical fiction revolves around American consumerism, popular culture, and male-female relationships. Biography Elkin was born to a Jewish family in Brooklyn, New York, and grew up in Chicago from age three onwards. He did both his undergraduate and graduate work at the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign, receiving a bachelor's degree in English in 1952 and a Ph.D. in 1961 for his dissertation on William Faulkner. During this period he was drafted and served in the U.S. Army from 1955 to 1957. In 1953 Elkin married Joan Marion Jacobson. He was a member of the English faculty at Washington University in St. Louis from 1960 until his death, and battled multiple sclerosis for most of his adult life. In 1968, he signed the "Writers and Editors War Tax Protest" pledge, vowing to refuse tax payments in protest against the Vietnam War. During ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ted Solotaroff
Theodore "Ted" Solotaroff (October 9, 1928 – August 8, 2008) was an American writer, editor and literary critic. Life and career Born into a working-class Jewish family in Elizabeth, New Jersey, Solotaroff attended the University of Michigan, graduating in 1952, and did graduate work at the University of Chicago, where he became friends with Philip Roth and dedicated himself to literature. He was an editor at ''Commentary'' from 1960 to 1966, then in 1967 founded '' The New American Review'', which was an influential literary journal in paperback, not magazine, format for the decade of its existence. After it folded, he became an editor at Harper & Row, where he edited works by Russell Banks, Sue Miller, Robert Bly, Bobbie Ann Mason, and others. "In 1989, when Rupert Murdoch bought Harper & Row, Solotaroff began to do less editing and more writing. He left the book business with a parting shot at what he labeled 'the literary-industrial complex.'"Joe HolleObituary latimes.com; ac ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Best American Series
{{italic title ''The Best American Series'' is a series of anthologies that is published annually by Mariner Books, an imprint of HarperCollins. Each title within the series covers a specific genre such as short stories or mysteries. The works for each year's edition are selected from those published elsewhere during the previous year. ''The Best American Short Stories'' has been published since 1915, making it the oldest continuous series of its type. Starting in 1986, additional titles were added for essays, sports writing, nature writing and more, at which time the broader ''The Best American Series'' moniker was introduced. The series was published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt prior to HarperCollins acquiring HMH Books & Media in 2021. Editing Each title has a continuing series editor who makes an initial selection of notable works from which a guest editor chooses those for inclusion in that year's edition. Guest editors are established authors in the title's associated genr ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Katrina Kenison
Katrina Kenison is an American author of literary memoir and nonfiction about parenting, life stages, mindfulness, and simplicity. Her first book, ''Mitten Strings for God: Reflections for Mothers in a Hurry'', published in 2000, encourages parents of young children to restore balance and stillness to lives often spent on the run. "Inspirational and life-affirming, it offers reminders of what is of lasting value, such as grace, love, tranquility." In 2009, Kenison published ''The Gift of an Ordinary Day: A Mother's Memoir,'' an exploration of the challenges and rewards of parenting adolescents. Her memoir ''Magical Journey: An Apprenticeship in Contentment'', published in January 2013, is a personal account of the losses and lessons of the second half of life. Kenison is also the author, with Rolf Gates, of ''Meditations from the Mat: Daily Reflections on the Path of Yoga''. A graduate of Smith College, she lives in New Hampshire with her husband, Steven Lewers, and is the moth ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Houghton Mifflin
The asterisk ( ), from Late Latin , from Ancient Greek , ''asteriskos'', "little star", is a typographical symbol. It is so called because it resembles a conventional image of a heraldic star. Computer scientists and mathematicians often vocalize it as star (as, for example, in ''the A* search algorithm'' or '' C*-algebra''). In English, an asterisk is usually five- or six-pointed in sans-serif typefaces, six-pointed in serif typefaces, and six- or eight-pointed when handwritten. Its most common use is to call out a footnote. It is also often used to censor offensive words. In computer science, the asterisk is commonly used as a wildcard character, or to denote pointers, repetition, or multiplication. History The asterisk has already been used as a symbol in ice age cave paintings. There is also a two thousand-year-old character used by Aristarchus of Samothrace called the , , which he used when proofreading Homeric poetry to mark lines that were duplicated. Origen is kn ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Leslie Marmon Silko
Leslie Marmon Silko (born Leslie Marmon; born March 5, 1948) is an American writer. A Laguna Pueblo Indian woman, she is one of the key figures in the First Wave of what literary critic Kenneth Lincoln has called the Native American Renaissance. Silko was a debut recipient of the MacArthur Foundation Grant in 1981. the Native Writers' Circle of the Americas Lifetime Achievement Award in 1994 and the Robert Kirsch Award in 2020. She currently resides in Tucson, Arizona. Early life Leslie Marmon Silko was born in Albuquerque, New Mexico to Leland Howard Marmon, a noted photographer, and Mary Virginia Leslie, a teacher, and grew up on the Laguna Pueblo Indian reservation. Silko grew up on the edge of pueblo society both literally – her family's house was at the edge of the Laguna Pueblo reservation – and figuratively, as she was not permitted to participate in various tribal rituals or join any of the pueblo's religious societies. While her parents worked, Silko and her tw ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Donald Barthelme
Donald Barthelme (April 7, 1931 – July 23, 1989) was an American short story writer and novelist known for his playful, postmodernist style of short fiction. Barthelme also worked as a newspaper reporter for the ''Houston Post'', was managing editor of ''Location'' magazine, director of the Contemporary Arts Museum in Houston (1961–1962), co-founder of ''Fiction'' (with Mark Mirsky and the assistance of Max and Marianne Frisch), and a professor at various universities. He also was one of the original founders of the University of Houston Creative Writing Program. Life Donald Barthelme was born in Philadelphia in 1931. His father and mother were fellow students at the University of Pennsylvania. The family moved to Texas two years later and Barthelme's father became a professor of architecture at the University of Houston, where Barthelme would later study journalism. Barthelme won a Scholastic Writing Award in Short Story in 1949, while a student at Lamar High School in ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
