Lee Smith Books In Order

Standalone Novels In Publication Order

  1. Last Day the Dogbushes Bloomed (1969)
  2. Fancy Strut (1973)
  3. Black Mountain Breakdown (1980)
  4. Oral History (1983)
  5. Family Linen (1985)
  6. Fair and Tender Ladies (1988)
  7. The Devil’s Dream (1992)
  8. Saving Grace (1995)
  9. The Last Girls (2002)
  10. On Agate Hill (2006)
  11. Guests on Earth (2013)

Short Stories/Novellas In Publication Order

  1. The Christmas Letters (1996)

Short Story Collections In Publication Order

  1. Cakewalk (1981)
  2. Me and My Baby View the Eclipse (1990)
  3. News of the Spirit (1997)
  4. Mrs. Darcy and the Blue-Eyed Stranger (2010)

Non-Fiction Books In Publication Order

  1. Conversations with Lee Smith (2012)
  2. Dimestore: A Writer’s Life (2016)

Conjunctions Books In Publication Order

  1. Conjunctions #1 (By:Bradford Morrow) (1981)
  2. Conjunctions #2 (By:Bradford Morrow) (1982)
  3. Conjunctions #3 (By:Bradford Morrow) (1982)
  4. Conjunctions #4 (By:Bradford Morrow) (1983)
  5. Conjunctions #5 (By:Bradford Morrow) (1983)
  6. Conjunctions #6 (By:Bradford Morrow) (1984)
  7. Conjunctions #7 (By:Bradford Morrow) (1985)
  8. Conjunctions #8 (By:Bradford Morrow) (1985)
  9. Conjunctions #9 (By:Bradford Morrow) (1986)
  10. Conjunctions #10 (By:Bradford Morrow) (1987)
  11. Conjunctions #11 (By:Bradford Morrow) (1988)
  12. Conjunctions #12 (By:Bradford Morrow) (1988)
  13. Conjunctions #13 (By:Bradford Morrow) (1989)
  14. Conjunctions #14 (By:Bradford Morrow) (1989)
  15. Conjunctions #15 (By:Bradford Morrow) (1990)
  16. Conjunctions #16 (By:Bradford Morrow) (1991)
  17. Conjunctions #17 (By:Bradford Morrow) (1991)
  18. Conjunctions #18 (By:Bradford Morrow) (1992)
  19. Conjunctions #19 (By:Bradford Morrow) (1992)
  20. Conjunctions #20 (By:Bradford Morrow) (1993)
  21. Conjunctions #21 (By:Bradford Morrow) (1993)
  22. Conjunctions #22 (By:Bradford Morrow) (1994)
  23. Conjunctions #23 (By:Bradford Morrow) (1994)
  24. Conjunctions #24 (By:Bradford Morrow) (1995)
  25. Conjunctions #25: The New American Theater (By:) (1995)
  26. Conjunctions #26 (By:Bradford Morrow) (1996)
  27. Conjunctions #27 (By:Bradford Morrow) (1996)
  28. Conjunctions #28 (By:Bradford Morrow) (1997)
  29. Conjunctions #29: Tributes (With: Bradford Morrow) (1997)
  30. Conjunctions #30 (By:Bradford Morrow) (1998)
  31. Conjunctions #31: Radical Shadows (By:Bradford Morrow) (1998)
  32. Conjunctions #32 (By:Bradford Morrow) (1999)
  33. Conjunctions #33 (By:Bradford Morrow) (1999)
  34. Conjunctions #34: American Fiction (By:Bradford Morrow) (2000)
  35. Conjunctions #35: American Poetry (By:Bradford Morrow) (2000)
  36. Conjunctions #36: Dark Laughter (By:Bradford Morrow) (2001)
  37. Conjunctions #37: Twentieth Anniversary Issue (By:Bradford Morrow) (2001)
  38. Conjunctions #38: Rejoicing Revoicing (By:Bradford Morrow) (2002)
  39. Conjunctions #39: The New Wave Fabulists (By:Peter Straub,Bradford Morrow) (2002)
  40. Conjunctions #40 (By:Bradford Morrow) (2003)
  41. Conjunctions #41: Two Kingdoms (By:Bradford Morrow) (2003)
  42. Conjunctions #42: Cinema Lingua (By:Bradford Morrow) (2004)
  43. Conjunctions #43: Beyond Arcadia (By:Bradford Morrow) (2004)
  44. Conjunctions #44: An Anatomy of Roads (By:Bradford Morrow) (2005)
  45. Conjunctions #45: Secret Lives of Children (By:Bradford Morrow) (2005)
  46. Conjunctions #46: Selected Subversions (By:Bradford Morrow) (2006)
  47. Conjunctions #47 (By:Bradford Morrow) (2006)
  48. Conjunctions #48: Faces of Desire (By:Bradford Morrow) (2007)
  49. Conjunctions #49: A Writers’ Aviary (By:Bradford Morrow) (2007)
  50. Conjunctions #50 (By:Bradford Morrow) (2008)
  51. Conjunctions #51: The Death Issue (By:Bradford Morrow) (2008)
  52. Conjunctions #52: Betwixt the Between (By:Bradford Morrow) (2009)
  53. Conjunctions #53: Not Even Past, Hybrid Histories (By:Bradford Morrow) (2009)
  54. Conjunctions #54: Shadow Selves (By:Bradford Morrow) (2010)
  55. Conjunctions #55: Urban Arias (By:Bradford Morrow) (2010)
  56. Conjunctions #56: Terra Incognita (By:Bradford Morrow) (2011)
  57. Conjunctions #57: Kin (By:Bradford Morrow) (2011)
  58. Conjunctions #58: Riveted (By:Bradford Morrow) (2012)
  59. Conjunctions #59: Colloquy (By:Bradford Morrow) (2012)
  60. Conjunctions #60: In Absentia (By:Bradford Morrow) (2013)
  61. Conjunctions #61: A Menagerie (By:Bradford Morrow) (2014)
  62. Conjunctions #62: Exile (By:Bradford Morrow) (2014)
  63. Conjunctions #63: Speaking Volumes (By:Bradford Morrow) (2015)
  64. Conjunctions #64: Natural Causes (By:Bradford Morrow) (2015)
  65. Conjunctions #65: Sleights of Hand (By:Bradford Morrow) (2016)
  66. Conjunctions #66: Affinity (By:Bradford Morrow) (2016)
  67. Conjunctions #67: Other Aliens (By:Bradford Morrow) (2016)
  68. Conjunctions #68: Inside Out (By:Bradford Morrow) (2017)
  69. Conjunctions #69: Being Bodies (By:Bradford Morrow) (2018)
  70. Conjunctions #70: Sanctuary (By:Bradford Morrow) (2018)
  71. Conjunctions #71: A Cabinet of Curiosity (By:Bradford Morrow) (2019)
  72. Conjunctions #72: Nocturnals (By:Bradford Morrow) (2019)
  73. Conjunctions #73: Earth Elegies (By:Bradford Morrow) (2019)
  74. Conjunctions #74: Grendel’s Kin – The Monsters Issue (By:Bradford Morrow) (2020)

New Stories From The South Books In Publication Order

  1. New Stories from the South (By:Shannon Ravenel) (1988)
  2. New Stories from the South 1992 (By:Shannon Ravenel) (1992)
  3. New Stories from the South 1993 (By:Shannon Ravenel) (1993)
  4. New Stories from the South 1994 (By:Shannon Ravenel) (1994)
  5. New Stories from the South 1995 (By:Shannon Ravenel) (1995)
  6. New Stories from the South 1996 (By:Shannon Ravenel) (1996)
  7. New Stories from the South (By:Robert Olen Butler) (1997)
  8. New Stories from the South 1998 (By:) (1998)
  9. New Stories from the South 1999 (By:) (1999)
  10. New Stories from the South 2000 (By:) (2000)
  11. New Stories from the South 2001 (2001)
  12. New Stories from the South 2002 (By:) (2002)
  13. New Stories from the South 2003 (By:) (2003)
  14. New Stories from the South 2004 (By:) (2004)
  15. New Stories from the South, 2005 (By:) (2005)
  16. Best of the South (By:Shannon Ravenel) (2005)
  17. New Stories from the South (By:) (2007)
  18. New Stories from the South 2008 (By:) (2008)
  19. New Stories from the South 2009 (By:Madison Smartt Bell) (2009)
  20. New Stories from the South 2010 (By:) (2010)

Anthologies In Publication Order

  1. Conjunctions #29: Tributes (1997)

Standalone Novels Book Covers

Short Stories/Novellas Book Covers

Short Story Collections Book Covers

Non-Fiction Book Covers

Conjunctions Book Covers

New Stories From The South Book Covers

Anthologies Book Covers

Lee Smith Books Overview

Fancy Strut

Speed, Alabama, is frantically preparing for the event of a lifetime: Sesquicentennial Week. And all her proud citizens are kicking up their heels in a lively, pompous Fancy Strut
.

Black Mountain Breakdown

Crystal Spangler lives in rural Appalachia. She’s the apple of her mother’s eye not yet beautiful, but she will be. She’s the most popular girl at Black Rock High. She makes cheerleader, gets good grades, and is elected beauty queen. Crystal discovers God, goes to college, and falls in love. When she comes home, she’s disheveled and confused. Crystal becomes a wealthy politician’s wife. But there’s something calling her, drawing her back to where it all began, in the shadow of Black Mountain…
From the Paperback edition.

Oral History

‘Delightful and entertaining.’PEOPLEWhen Jennifer, a college student, returns to her childhood home of Hoot Owl Holler with a tape recorder, the tales of murder and suicide, incest and blood ties, bring to life a vibrant story of a doomed family that still refuses to give up…
.’Deft and assured…
. Lee Smith is nothing less than masterly.’THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEWFrom the Paperback edition.

Family Linen

‘Brilliant, haunting, dark, joyous, remarkably compelling…
immensely difficult to put down…
a master storyteller.’THE VILLAGE VOICEA childhood memory re experienced, a funeral that brings about a family reunion, and the excavation of a swimming pool on the site of an old well, uncover family secrets and air the dirty linen in this behind the scenes look at life and family, memory and forgetfulness, anger and forgiveness in a small Southern town.’Falls in line with the best of classical Southern fiction…
but Ms. Smith’s vision is her own and places her among the best of contemporary Southern writers.’THE ATLANTA CONSTITUTIONFrom the Paperback edition.

Fair and Tender Ladies

‘A TOUR DE FORCE’ Los Angeles Times’The story of Ivy Rowe, born near the turn of the century in the Virginia Mountain enclave of Sugar Fork, is told completely through letters that Ivy is forever writing family and friends…
Lee Smith exhibits her own understanding and affection for the traditions of the Appalachians. She is at home with the down home speech and ways of her characters. They come vividly to life, and none more so than Ivy, whose voice and heart and humor sustain Fair and Tender Ladies.’ Philadelphia Inquirer’Because of Ivy’s narrative ability and her zest for living, Fair and Tender Ladies opens for us like a flower with a gloriously unexpected center. There are unforgettable characters…
Few readers will be dry eyed as they watch this extraordinary woman disappear around that last bend in the road.’ Chicago Tribune’These beautiful letters…
display Ivy’s soul up close, the way a just caught firefly illuminates a jar. So real does she become that it is hard to believe that Ivy did not actually live to write her letters.’ USA Today’This is about a moving a work of literature as has ever been written.’ ANNIE DILLARD

The Devil’s Dream

Now back in print from the New York Times bestselling author of The Last Girls.

It was in 1833 or ’34 that Moses Bailey brought young Kate Malone down to Cold Spring Holler to be his wife. But Moses, wanting to become a preacher like his daddy was, left Kate time and again to look after the kids while he went out in search of a sign from God. Though he warned them about the evils of playing the fiddle, a kind of music he likened to the devil’s own laughter, it passed the time for his bride and children, and soon became not just a way of life for the Baileys, but a curse that would last for generations.

Saving Grace

From Publishers Weekly Florida Grace Shepherd is another of Smith’s spirited Southern women of humble background Fair and Tender Ladies, etc. who are destined to endure difficult and often tragic times. Instantly appealing by virtue of her distinctive narrative voice, which is iconoclastic and free from self pity, Grace is the daughter of Virgil Shepherd, a self styled minister who spreads the gospel in revival meetings by means of serpent handling and personal charisma. Even as a child, ‘Gracie’ hates her father’s insistence on constant prayer, poverty and the need to see God’s benevolent ‘testing’ in every hardship to which he subjects his family. As she matures, she realizes that her father is a compulsive womanizer who excuses his frequent lapses by claiming that God forgives him whenever he ‘backslides.’ Though his behavior eventually drives her mother to suicide, it takes longer for Grace herself to escape her father’s psychic clutches. She is seduced by a half brother at 14 and at 17 marries a melancholy 42 year old preacher; she has two children and succumbs to an adulterous affair. Smith has great empathy for the poor, uneducated country people who yearn for a transcendent message to infuse their lives with spiritual meaning, and she demonstrates clearly how an aberrant individual like Virgil can attract fervent followers. She is less successful than usual in winning sympathy for her flawed hero*ine, however. Although she makes understandable the reasons for Grace’s shallow personality and shows how a lifetime of sexual repression can trigger infidelity, Grace’s abandonment of her children seems implausible, and her suffering never achieves a convincing poignancy. Literary Guild selection. Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.

The Last Girls

THE NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER

LEE SMITH
Author of News of the Spirit

The Last Girls
A Novel

Wise and insightful…
The Last Girls deserves to be shared, pondered, and treasured.
The Dallas Morning News
A GENIAL, THOUGHTFUL, FUNNY NOVEL, WRITTEN WITH THE WIT AND ASSURANCE OF A BORN STORYTELLER.
The Hartford Courant

RICH AND DELICIOUS…
THE STORY OF FOUR WOMEN…
Years ago, they were girls, not women the last generation of American females to be called girls who traveled down the Mississippi River…
on a makeshift raft while they were on summer vacation…
There were twelve of them on that trip; now there are these four, brought together by tragedy. One of their classmates…
has died in an automobile wreck was it really an accident?, and her husband has asked the old friends to re create the river journey and scatter her ashes at the mouth of the Mississippi…
. It’s a reunion of classmates with all of the in between revealed in intimate detail, as only a skilled and classy storyteller can do it.
The Boston Globe

AN HONEST PORTRAIT OF INTELLIGENT, WELL ROUNDED SOUTHERNERS is always refreshing, and The Last Girls delivers. The book may be influenced by Twain, but Smith proves she has a voice all her own.
USA Today
BREEZILY WRITTEN AND DISPLAYING SMITH S TRADEMARK PITCH PERFECT EAR FOR DIALOGUE, funny but with the dark touches of all good comedy, the novel charts the course by which the girls…
seek love and self fulfillment during the three decades approaching the end of the century. Call it Huckleberry Fin de Si cle.
Time Out New York

SMITH S COMIC GENIUS SPARKLES…
Under Smith s deft hand, these woman bloom exceptionally authentic…
Using the premise that both a reunion and a riverboat provide good lookouts on the past, she details the passing terrain as she details each woman s emotional history, from child to adult, from dates to love affairs, from silly shenanigans to tragic accidents. And what details! The book is filled with memorable scenes…
. Smith adds a purely feminine, deeply southern twist to the Mark Twain tradition of humor and precision applied generously to the subject of human weakness.
Richmond Times Dispatch

Lee Smith s genius is in her seamless weaving of the two stories, past and present, so that we realize what the stakes are for these women, and how they have arrived at the reunion as footsore pilgrims a bit battered and bruised, but sailing on nevertheless…
. Smith has that talent that all storytellers envy: the ability to dive deeply into the lives of her characters, to bring them to life in their rich fullness, warts and all. Each of these women could energize an entire book. Each brings something unique and captivating to a superb tale that will stay with you long after the reading is done. Together they compel each of us to ask what has brought us to the near shore, and how we set sail from here.
The Boston Globe

On Agate Hill

Molly Petree, orphaned by the Civil War, is by her own definition ‘a spitfire and a burden. I do not care. My family is a dead family, and this is not my home, for I am a refugee girl.’

Raised in the ruins of a once prosperous plantation On Agate Hill in North Carolina, she’s a refugee who has no interest in self pity. To document her headstrong life, she collects its artifacts her lifelong diaries, letters, poems, songs, newspaper clippings, court records, marbles, rocks, dolls, bones some human, some not.

When a mysterious benefactor appears out of her father’s past to rescue her, teenaged Molly Petree never looks back. Taking what she is offered, she saves herself and then risks everything to hold true to her nature and to true love. She casts aside two prosperous, well born suitors to marry a dashing and philandering mountaineer only to be accused of his murder. The end of Molly Petree’s story is as unpredictable and as passionate as her own wide open heart.

Spanning half a century, Lee Smith’s portrait of a fiery Southern woman recalls the South from Reconstruction to the Roaring Twenties and, in the process, gives us Molly Petree, living and breathing, gripping the reader’s arm as the story unfolds.

The Christmas Letters

In The Christmas Letters, three generations of women reveal their stories of love and marriage in the letters they write to family and friends during the holidays. It’s a down home Christmas story about tradition, family, and the shared experiences of women.

Here, in a letter of her own, Lee Smith explains how she was inspired to write this celebrated epistolary novel:

Dear Friends,

Like me, you probably get Christmas letters every year. I read every word and save every letter. Because every Christmas letter is the story of a life, and what story can be more interesting than the story of our lives? Often, it is the story of an entire family. But you also have to read between the lines with Christmas letters. Sometimes, what is not said is even more important than what is on the page.

In The Christmas Letters, I have used this familiar format to illumine the lives, hopes, dreams, and disappointments of three generations of American women. Much of the story of The Christmas Letters is also told through shared recipes. As Mary, my favorite character, says, ‘I feel as if I have written out my life story in recipes! The Cool Whip and mushroom soup years, the hibachi and fondue period, then the quiche and cr pes phase, and now it’s these salsa years.’

I wrote this little book for the same reason I write to my friends and relatives every holiday Christmas letters give us a chance to remember and celebrate who we are.

With warmest greetings, Lee Smith

Cakewalk

In these dazzling stories, acclaimed author Lee Smith wants you to meet:Mrs. Joline B. Newhouse, who writes a ‘fortnightly’ newspaper column called ‘Between the Lines.’Georgia Rose, the girl whose life is more like a soap opera than the TV serial she’s addicted to. Martha Rasnick, the young housewife in ‘Dear Phil Donahue’ who writes all her troubles to the TV personality. Florrie, the cake lady in ‘Cakewalk‘ who causes her prissy sister no end of embarrassment by ‘wearing running shoes, at her age, and wooly white athletic socks that fall in crinkles down around her ankles.’From the Paperback edition.

Me and My Baby View the Eclipse

In her first collection since Cakewalk, Smith writes about average folk whose average lives are suddenly shakens all.

News of the Spirit

‘Delightful…
comical…
Smith never forgets that a great artist
makes her craft appear effortless. With News of the Spirit, she takes that
one step further: she appears to be having fun.’

Bookpage

‘Smith’s collection will not disappoint her fans.’

The New York Times Book Review

‘Smith writes beautifully, evocatively and believably about women and
their feelings…
. What Smith doesn’t write, what she leaves in the
tiny spaces between sentences, between narrative moments, is as important
as what she insists our attention be turned to…
. Above all, she
delights in storytelling, in the sounds of words and the ways that they
relate to meaning, to memory and to the mayhem we do to ourselves and
others, with the blessings thrown in that things can sometimes be made
whole to our advantage.’

Seattle Post Intelligencer

‘Smith excels at creating characters somewhat boggled by the reality of
who they’ve become.’

Publishers Weekly

Mrs. Darcy and the Blue-Eyed Stranger

A celebrated novelist, Lee Smith is likewise recognized as a master of the short story and has been compared with such luminaries as Katherine Ann Porter, Eudora Welty, and Flannery O Connor. Now she collects fourteen stories seven brand new ones along with seven favorites from her three earlier collections. The result? A book of dazzling richness. Famous for unmistakable voices and a craft so strong and sure it seems effortless, Lee Smith’s stories strike dead center at the turning points of her characters lives. Here those characters range from an eight year old boy obsessed with vocabulary words to a young bride who has married ‘way up’ to Mrs. Darcy herself, an older woman making it through widowhood her own way. As the New York Times Book Review put it, ‘In almost every one of her stories there is a moment of vision, or love, or unclothed wonder that transforms something plain into something transcendent.’With this collection her first in thirteen years Smith reclaims her place as the reigning queen of the bittersweet short story.

Conjunctions #13 (By:Bradford Morrow)

This first rate literary review contains excerpts from forthcoming novels by William S. Burroughs, Jim Crace, Toby Olson and many more.

Conjunctions #20 (By:Bradford Morrow)

Edited by John Guare. 6 x 9 in.

Conjunctions #21 (By:Bradford Morrow)

Edited by John Guare. 6 x 9 in.

Conjunctions #27 (By:Bradford Morrow)

Edited by Robert Antoni and Bradford Morrow. 4 b&w and 3 duotones. 6 x 9 in.

Conjunctions #28 (By:Bradford Morrow)

Edited by Bradford Morrow. 12 b&w and 15 duotones. 6 x 9 in.

Conjunctions #29: Tributes (With: Bradford Morrow)

Edited by Martine Bellen, Bradford Morrow and Lee Smith. 45 duotones. 6 x 9 in.

Conjunctions #30 (By:Bradford Morrow)

Edited by Bradford Morrow. 7 b&w and 18 duotones. 6 x 9 in.

Conjunctions #31: Radical Shadows (By:Bradford Morrow)

Edited by Peter Constantine and Bradford Morrow. 11 b&w and 28 duotones. 6 x 9 in.

Conjunctions #32 (By:Bradford Morrow)

Edited by Bradford Morrow. 45 b&w and 67 duotones. 6 x 9 in.

Conjunctions #33 (By:Bradford Morrow)

10 b&w and 20 duotones. 6 x 9 in.

Conjunctions #34: American Fiction (By:Bradford Morrow)

Edited by Bradford Morrow. 6 x 9 in.

Conjunctions #36: Dark Laughter (By:Bradford Morrow)

Contains a special portfolio, co edited by Jonathan Safran Foer and Bradford Morrow, presenting work exploring the darker sides of comedy. Authors include Robert Coover, Jonathan Ames and others. The issue also contains new work by Homero Aridjis, Sarah Rothenberg and William T. Vollman amongst others.

Conjunctions #37: Twentieth Anniversary Issue (By:Bradford Morrow)

In celebration of its 20th anniversary, Conjunctions, ‘arguably the most distinguished journal of prose and poetry in America’ Elle, gathers a virtual Who’s Who of innovative contemporary literature. Conjunctions:37 will feature new work by writers as diverse as Don DeLillo, Paul Auster, Chinua Achebe, Rick Moody, Richard Powers, Jorie Graham, William T. Vollmann, Paul West, Carole Maso, Ann Lauterbach, and many surprise contributors. This special issue will also feature an important short story by Vladimir Nabokov, newly translated by Dimitri Nabokov for Conjunctions, which has never before appeared in English. Joyce Carol Oates offers a first look at her haunting new novel in progress, The Falls, and William H. Gass gives us a darkly hilarious tour de force with his novella, Charity. The 20th anniversary issue will surely be, as the Village Voice has said of Conjunctions, ‘A must read’ for anyone interested in contemporary fiction, poetry, and drama.

Conjunctions #38: Rejoicing Revoicing (By:Bradford Morrow)

It has been said that translators are the unacknowledged ambassadors of literature. With Rejoicing Revoicing, Conjunctions celebrates these masterful artists as the bearers of cultural riches that they are. In an unprecedented gathering of works in progress by many of America’s most renowned translators and some of the field’s younger stars, Rejoicing Revoicing invites readers on an odyssey through both classic and contemporary world literature. From Latin America to Europe, from Africa to East Asia, and from Medieval and Renaissance to the present, these works show how rich, diverse, and challenging is the art of translation. Richard Howard offers poems by Maurice Maeterlinck, with a preface about what drew him to this author. Edith Grossman, acclaimed for her translations of Marquez and Llosa, presents a chapter from her new Don Quixote. Kafka translator Breon Mitchell gives a first look at prize winning German novelist Uwe Timm’s new book. Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky foremost translators of Gogol, Dostoevsky, and Tolstoy share their new version of Dostoevsky’s The Adolescent. Rejoicing, Revoicing also presents new work by cutting edge poets, playwrights, and fiction writers who test the edges of English as the mother tongue.

Conjunctions #39: The New Wave Fabulists (By:Peter Straub,Bradford Morrow)

For perhaps two decades, a small group of writers rooted in the genres of science fiction, fantasy and horror have been simultaneously exploring and erasing the boundaries of those genres by creating fiction of remarkable depth and power. Their connections to the genres they have been radically redefining have, for many of these writers, limited the appreciation of their accomplishments to a specialized readership. For example, though John Crowley and Jonathan Carroll have massive underground reputations, and Peter Straub has written two books with Stephen King and other bestselling novels such as Ghost Story, Koko, and The Throat, many if not most readers of Conjunctions will be unfamiliar with their work. In this haunting and beautiful collection of tales, Crowley, Carroll and Straub join Elizabeth Hand, China Mieville, M. John Harrison, Neil Gaiman and Kelly Link to demonstrate precisely how science fiction, fantasy and horror have been unobtrusively colonizing serious literature during the past 20 years. As an added bonus, science fiction and fantasy experts Gary K. Wolfe and John Clute offer a critical perspective and explain everything in sight. With original cover art by master cartoonist Gahan Wilson.

Conjunctions #40 (By:Bradford Morrow)

In celebration of Conjunctions’ 40th issue, the journal has gathered together fiction, poetry, plays, and creative essays by some of its favorite contemporary writers. Featuring novels in progress from authors including Richard Powers, Howard Norman, Paul Auster, and Lois Ann Yamanaka, as well as ‘Heli,’ a surreal novella by China’s foremost fiction writer, Can Xue, in which a boy falls in love with a girl who lives entrapped in a glass cabinet from which he must free her. Short fiction by writers such as Rikki Ducornet, William T. Vollmann, William H. Gass and Diane Williams appears, in addition to ‘Condition,’ a harrowing story by Christopher Sorrentino, based on historical events from the 1970s, charting the psychological disintegration of a female newscaster who, on her last day alive, methodically plots her suicide on live TV. 40×40 also features creative nonfiction by David Shields and Eliot Weinberger, poetry by Cole Swensen, Martine Bellen, John Ashbery, Lyn Hejinian, and Robert Creeley, and a visual poem by Tan Lin. Rounding out this diverse celebration of contemporary work is a previously unpublished play by Joyce Carol Oates, specially commissioned for this anniversary issue, and a lively full color portfolio of new work by Russian emigr artist Ilya Kabakov. Edited by Bradford Morrow. Paperback, 6 x 9 in. 420 pages, 12 color illustrations

Conjunctions #41: Two Kingdoms (By:Bradford Morrow)

This fall, Conjunctions lives up to its name by bringing together two distinguished and award winning novelists Howard Norman, who guest edits the issue, and Rick Moody, who edits a special portfolio. Conjunctions: 41, Two Kingdoms is an anthology of previously unpublished writing that addresses the theme of inescapable dualism in our lives. The issue’s title derives from a letter by Edward Lear. Collecting fiction, poetry, essays and multi genre works, this issue explores the individual who inhabits two spheres, from the geographic to the linguistic, from the psychological to the historic and beyond. Contributors include Peter Matthiessen, David Mamet, Jerome Rothenberg and many others. ‘The Gaddis Dossier,’ edited by Rick Moody, gathers specially commissioned essays paying tribute to one of the 20th century’s greatest writers, William Gaddis, on the occasion of the 5th anniversary of his death. Contributions to this section range from defenses of the difficulty of his work to appreciations of its lightness and comedy, and they blend the insights of readers with the tributes of friends and colleagues. Texts come via Don DeLillo, Paul Auster, Susan Cheever, Russell Banks, Stewart O’Nan, Siri Hustvedt, Bradford Morrow, Christopher Sorrentino, David Shields, Ben Marcus, Steven Moore, Joseph McElroy, Robert Coover, William H. Gass, Maureen Howard, Joanna Scott and others.

Conjunctions #42: Cinema Lingua (By:Bradford Morrow)

Now that the art of motion pictures has matured into its second century, Conjunctions has commissioned a diverse group of writers to respond in poetry, fiction, and multi genre works to the countless cultural, historical, psychological, and theatrical aspects of the seductive flickering medium we watch in the dark. Cinema Lingua pays creative homage to the symbiosis between filmmaking and the written word. Our authors explore, rewrite, and celebrate all avenues of film, from its narrative plots to visual storytelling, from character to mood, from lighting to suspense. Each contributor presents defining visions of the movies and focuses the lens of writing on one of our liveliest modern art forms, from mainstream Hollywood to the most exotic corners of the experimental and avant garde. A movie theater of the mind, Cinema Lingua’s contributors include Joyce Carol Oates, who explores the troubled relationship between Alfred Hitchcock and his leading ladies, Peter Straub writing on film noir, Peter Gizzi, who offers a multi genre poem on silent film, Frederic Tuten, whose Never Never Land Near Marienbad is based on the Alain Resnais film, as well as works by Peter Hutton, Elizabeth Willis, Robert Coover, William H. Gass, Tan Lin, Kent Jones, Joshua Furst, and many others. Edited by Bradford Morrow. Paperback, 6 x 9 in./400 pgs /

Conjunctions #43: Beyond Arcadia (By:Bradford Morrow)

The contemporary innovative poetry world is as lively and provocative today as at any time in the last century. Over the course of more than two decades, Conjunctions has published the work of hundreds of highly original poets, both young and established. For issue no. 43, Beyond Arcadia, Conjunctions has invited 12 prominent and respected writers to undertake the difficult task of selecting their favorite young writer, one they feel is destined to become a major voice in American poetry. Among the 12 selectors are prize winning poets including Jorie Graham, Ann Lauterbach, Lyn Hejinian, Peter Gizzi, Fanny Howe, Michael Palmer, Robert Creeley, John Ashberry, Martine Bellen, Sandra Cisneros, Forrest Gander and Nathaniel Mackey. Each of the young poets chosen whose work has not yet enjoyed wide exposure will be represented by a chapbook length selection of new work with an introduction from their mentor/selector. Beyond Arcadia introduces a cross selection of unique voices from among many in the talented new wave of poets at work today. This groundbreaking issue will also feature a previously unpublished play by filmmaker John Sayles; new fiction by John Barth, Ben Marcus, Jon McGregor, Rick Moody, and many others; as well as a previously unpublished masterpiece of Russian surrealism, A Certain Quantity of Conversations Or, The Completely Altered Nightbook, a play by Aleksandr Vvendensky.

Conjunctions #44: An Anatomy of Roads (By:Bradford Morrow)

Leaving home is a dangerous business. Whether it’s to walk across the street or travel to another continent, one never returns the same. Conjunctions: 44, An Anatomy of Roads: The Quest Issue, explores in fiction and poetry the fascinating, complex process of defamiliarization as the ultimate path to knowing oneself. John Barth contributes an astonishing, hilarious novella entitled, ‘I’ve Been Told: A Story’s Story,’ which may be the ultimate quest narrative in that the story of a quester is narrated by the quest itself. Young Bristish author and Booker Award finalist for his first novel, If Nobody Speaks of Remarkable Things, Jon McGregor offers a story of a distraught man who travels to an unnamed island in search of his lost father. David Schuman’s story ‘Miss’ is an eerie modern desert journey in which a man and his daughter, who is convinced that she is a cat, encounters the mother who abandoned him working in a Twilight Zone like diner in the middle of nowhere. ‘Kronia,’ by celebrated fantasy writer Elizabeth Hand, details a love story that may or may not have actually happened over the course of decades around the world. Joanna Scott, Carole Maso, Rikki Ducornet, Nathaniel Mackey, Forrest Gander, and some 24 other writers contribute to this journey of the mind.

Conjunctions #45: Secret Lives of Children (By:Bradford Morrow)

Our years as children are often the most vulnerable, harrowing, expansive, mysterious, blissful, and dangerous times we must negotiate. Whether rich with possibility or scarred by trauma, childhood offers an endless arena of exploration for writers. This issue of the lauded literary magazineConjunctions gathers fiction, poetry, and memoirs by three dozen of the most innovative writers working today. One of China’s foremost fiction writers, Can Xue, contributes the tale of young Sumei in ‘Blue Light in the Sky,’ a surreal vision of village life among rats and scorpions. Robert Clark’s memoir ‘Headlong’ pays bittersweet homage to his socially ambitious gay stepfather. Illustrated with photographs of family life, it is a remembrance punctuated by obsessions with washing machines, snow forts, Boy Scouts, and Socrates. ‘Close to Home,’ Joshua Furst’s startlingly original fiction work, portrays a bleak foster childhood, tracing a tremulous path from the narrator’s first memory of his mother to the moment of his deepest fantasy about her. Mary Caponegro’s novel excerpt, ‘Chinese Chocolate,’ narrates the strange life at a Long Island Catholic school in which nuns dwell on the ‘gory details’ of backseat fumbling and Father Connelly bristles at a bare assed Romeo on the big screen. Contributors include noted naturalist Diane Ackerman, novelist Paul LaFarge, among others.

Conjunctions #46: Selected Subversions (By:Bradford Morrow)

This anthology of commissioned writing on subjects as wide ranging as rock and roll lyrics, movies, science, po*rnography, curiosity cabinets, jazz and magic offers rich insights into a vast spectrum of ideas. The classic essay form postulation, argument, exegesis, conclusion ain’t what it used to be. Lately it’s too often referred to as what

Conjunctions #47 (By:Bradford Morrow)

‘In its first issue, published a quarter of a century ago, Conjunctions established itself immediately as a major journal of international literary arts, with contributors including Paul Bowles, Tennessee Williams, Octavio Paz, Denise Levertov and Lawrence Ferlinghetti. Over the ensuing years, it has remained at the forefront, publishing writing by then unknowns William T. Vollmann, David Foster Wallace, Rick Moody, Mary Caponegro and Jonathan Safran Foer. This special Twenty fifth Anniversary Issue continues the work at which Conjunctions is unparalleled: discovering tomorrow’s literary giants while keeping readers abreast of new work by the most important, edgy and distinguished voices of the day. This issue showcases new fiction, poetry and essays by such luminaries as Jonathan Lethem, Jim Crace, William H. Gass, Robert Coover, John Ashbery, Ann Lauterbach, Thalia Field, John Barth, Rikki Ducornet, Joyce Carol Oates, C. D. Wright, Peter Straub, Shelley Jackson, Richard Powers, David Shields, Lydia Davis, Rick Moody, Marjorie Welish and Jorie Graham, along with a number of surprise guest writers. As the first issue of Conjunctions defined the fiction and poetry that came to dominate the last 25 years, so this issue will become an indispensable handbook for our literary future.

Conjunctions #48: Faces of Desire (By:Bradford Morrow)

‘Desire, for hire, would tire a shire,’ James Joyce wrote in Finnegans Wake, though Conjunctions: 48 proposes the shire’d be tired even if the desire weren’t hired. Desire informs everything we do, from the smallest gestures to the grandest concerns. When it establishes residence in the heart, it becomes a tireless engine, motivating good, and by turns evil. Yearning can be sexual or religious, charitable or greedy, thoughtful or callous, profound as belief or superficial as a whim. Is there any more formidable, defining emotion? Mary Gaitskill, Mei mei Berssenbrugge, Mary Caponegro, Robert Kelly, Carole Maso, Brian Evenson, Robert Olen Butler, Joyce Carol Oates, Will Self, David Shields, Frederic Tuten and Rikki Ducornet, mong others, explore its tricky terrain in never before published essays, memoirs, poetry and fiction. Faces of Desire is an exuberant look now grim, now hilarious, now poignant into one of the most mysterious and crucial forces of life.

Conjunctions #49: A Writers’ Aviary (By:Bradford Morrow)

From the mythic phoenix rising from the ashes to the bird of paradise, which, according both to legend and Linnaeus, remained in flight its whole life, birds have set imaginations soaring. The sacred quetzal, the authoritative bald eagle, the wise owl, the gothic raven there isn’t a species that has failed to inspire us symbol crazy, earthbound human observers. Edited by Bradford Morrow, 2007 winner of the PEN/Nora Magid Award honoring a magazine editor with the highest literary standards and taste throughout their career, the newest installment of Conjunctions collects a vast spectrum of works about birds by ornithologists and everyday birders, together with poets and fiction writers from several continents. Among the many contributors are British poet Tim Dee, Canadian writer Sylvia Legris and Americans D. E. Steward, William H. Gass and Peter Orner. The issue also celebrates the distinguished half century career of John Ashbery in a portfolio of essays addressing his oeuvre, book by book. Among the contributions co edited by Morrow and Peter Gizzi: Reginald Shepherd on Some Trees, Susan Howe and Peter Straub on The Tennis Court Oath, Charles Bernstein on Rivers and Mountains, Ron Silliman on Three Poems, Susan Stewart on Self Portrait in a Convex Mirror, Ann Lauterbach on As We Know, Cole Swensen on Hotel Lautreamont, Harry Mathews on Your Name Here and Robert Kelly on Chinese Whispers.

Conjunctions #50 (By:Bradford Morrow)

Winner of the 2007 PEN/Nora Magid Award for Excellence in Literary Editing. Winner of a 2007 O. Henry Prize for Best Short Story. Winner of two 2007 Pushcart Prizes for Fiction, and four Special Mentions. Honored with two 2007 Harper’s Readings selections. And now, in Spring 2008, Conjunctions publishes its milestone fiftieth issue and offers readers a chance to discover once more why it is the most celebrated and provocative literary journal on the scene today. Conjunctions: 50 features never before published fiction, poetry, essays and drama by 50 of contemporary literature’s finest writers, including Sandra Cisneros, William H. Gass, Diane Williams, Ann Lauterbach, John Ashbery, Rick Moody, Mei mei Berssenbrugge, Can Xue, Eduardo Galeano, Robert Coover, Joyce Carol Oates, Christopher Sorrentino and Charles Bernstein, along with exciting new voices like Matthew Hamity and Brian Booker. In the late 1980s, the legendary George Plimpton, editor of The Paris Review, called Conjunctions, ‘The most interesting and superbly edited literary journal founded in the last decade.’ Almost 20 years later, the promise expressed in his words continues to be kept. Fifty Contemporary Writers is a must read for anyone interested in what’s happening at the front edge of writing today.

Conjunctions #51: The Death Issue (By:Bradford Morrow)

As Cormac McCarthy wrote, ‘Death is the major issue in the world. For you, for me, for all of us. It just is. To not be able to talk about it is very odd.’ For the Fall 2008 issue of Conjunctions, editor Bradford Morrow invited award winning writer David Shields, author of the 2008 New York Times bestseller The Thing About Life Is That One Day You’ll Be Dead, to gather work from a diverse cross section of contemporary authors to address the theme of death. The subject prompted responses ranging from the profound to the jocular, from philosophy to consciousness, fear, doom, irony and even humor. The Death Issue features innovative essays and meditations by Dave Eggers, Joyce Carol Oates, Tom Robbins, Dr. Pauline W. Chen, David Gates, Mark Doty, Robin Hemley, Albert Goldbarth, Joe Wenderoth, Daphne Merkin, Dr. Lauren Slater, Greg Bottoms, Susan Daitch, John D’Agata, Richard Stern, Mary Ruefle and Christopher Sorrentino, among others. David Shields is the author of eight previous books, including Black Planet a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award, Remote winner of the PEN/Revson Award and Dead Languages winner of the PEN Syndicated Fiction Award. His essays and stories have appeared in The New York Times Magazine, Harper’s, Yale Review, Village Voice, Utne Reader, Salon, Slate, McSweeney’s and The Believer. The Chairman of the 2007 National Book Awards nonfiction panel, he is a recipient of a Guggenheim fellowship, among many other awards.

Conjunctions #52: Betwixt the Between (By:Bradford Morrow)

Postfantasy fiction that defies definition is at the center of a groundbreaking issue edited by Bradford Morrow and Brian Evenson in the Spring 2009 edition of Conjunctions. Imagine an everyday world in which meat is grown in vats by men called collies and butchered by BattleBots while adults play Frisbee with robots. Imagine a world in which secret societies meet in private to have ‘soft evenings’ during which they travel ‘psychotic highways.’ Imagine what might follow the opening lines of ‘Brain Jelly’ by Stephen Wright: ‘Apostrophe came from a country where all the cheese was blue. The cows there ate berries the whole day long. You should see their tongues.’ Along with other fictions gathered in this issue, these stories begin with the premise that the unfamiliar or liminal really constitutes solid, though undeniably strange, ground on which to walk. Contributors include such veterans as Jonathan Lethem, Elizabeth Hand, Theodore Enslin, George Saunders, Peter Straub, James Morrow, China Mieville, Robert Coover, Kelly Link, Jeff VanderMeer, M. John Harrison and Ben Marcus, as well as emerging writers such as Jon Enfield, Karen Russell, Micaela Morrissette and Stephen Marche.

Conjunctions #53: Not Even Past, Hybrid Histories (By:Bradford Morrow)

For the past 25 years, the journal Conjunctions has been known for introducing unlikely literary juxtapositions. Issue 53 takes such mergers as its theme, examining the hybrids that are created when fiction and poetry enter the supposedly objective realm of history. Many questions are raised by the pairings presented: is it possible, for instance, that the narrative artist can forge a heightened vision of what was, or what might have been, that becomes more compelling, more telling, than the historian’s account? What does it mean when an historical incident becomes myth, and that myth influences history? The instigators of these queries are a stellar selection of voices from contemporary fiction, poetry and drama, including Robert Coover, Nathaniel Mackey, Peter Gizzi, Elizabeth Robinson, William H. Gass, Can Xue, Howard Norman and Paul West. They share a knack for conjuring historical periods, events and characters in a blur of fact, fiction and a visionary hybrid of the two.

Conjunctions #54: Shadow Selves (By:Bradford Morrow)

The mirror is humankind’s most duplicitous invention. When we look into it do we see ourselves or an other? If we see an other, is that other a lie or some complex extension of a truth we don’t quite grasp? And when we set down the mirror and imagine ourselves to be one or the other or some combination of both, who have we become? In this special issue of Conjunctions, the very idea of self is tackled in fiction and poetry that investigates everything from innocent misperception to studied deception, delusion to fraud, crazed misdemeanors to premeditated crime. Shadow Selves offers a spectrum of permutations on these themes, with acclaimed and upcoming writers such as Elizabeth Hand, J.W. McCormack, Jonathan Carroll, Karen Russell, Peter Straub, Eleni Sikelianos, Frederick Tuten, Michael Sheean, Jason Labbe, Jess Row, Rae Armantrout, Melinda Moustakis and Rick Moody.

Conjunctions #56: Terra Incognita (By:Bradford Morrow)

Imaginary voyages are as old as literature itself. In the spirit of the ancient mythographer Euhemerus and such imaginary voyagers as Jonathan Swift, Italo Calvino, Daniel Defoe and Bruce Chatwin, Conjunctions 56: Terra Incognita, Imaginary Voyages gathers the outlandish testaments and peripatetic observations of contemporary writers who have been Elsewhere. Through stories, travel diaries, poems, postcards, new ancient legends, epic quests, mind trips, manipulated histories and dispatches from a wide range of innovative authors, readers will travel to places they have surely never visited before. Contributors include Charles Bernstein, Robert Coover, Kathryn Davis, Peter Gizzi, Benjamin Hale, Tim Horvath, John Madera, Donald Revell, Susan Steinberg and G.C. Waldrep.

Conjunctions #57: Kin (By:Bradford Morrow)

Nothing is more familiar, nothing more ineffable than the emotional prism, the blood knot that constitutes family. We can try to leave them, they can disinherit us, but there is no dispelling DNA, no true exile from that which binds us with our kin. In Conjunctions: 57, Kin, more than two dozen contributors, including Rick Moody, Karen Russell and Jonathan Lethem, explore the intricacies and knots of family ties. Essayist Karen Hays offers a meditation on a sledding outing with her children on the day that her son’s first pet dies, contemplating everything from Euclidean geometry to the algorithm used in credit card encryption to the ‘wintry vista’ of infinity. Micaela Morrissette weighs in with a Calvinoesque portrait of two siblings whose powers far exceed the everyday. This special issue of Conjunctions addresses the labyrinthine nature of kinship through essays, fiction and poetry.

New Stories from the South 1992 (By:Shannon Ravenel)

The seventh edition of a respected annual collection of short stories from Southern writers features diverse writers and varied subject matter, accompanied by concise author profiles and photographs.

New Stories from the South 1993 (By:Shannon Ravenel)

An annual compendium of the year’s finest stories by Southern writers features tales by Jill McCorkle, Wendell Berry, Richard Bausch, Robert Olen Butler, Elizabeth Hunnewell, Tony Earley, David Huddle, Barbara Hudson, and others.

New Stories from the South 1994 (By:Shannon Ravenel)

A new anthology of short fiction, representing the best in Southern literature, features the work of Frederick Barthelme, Richard Bausch, Ethan Canin, Reynolds Price, Nancy Krusoe, Nanci Kincaid, Barry Hannah, John Sayles, and other notable writers.

New Stories from the South 1995 (By:Shannon Ravenel)

The annual collection of Southern stories has a Louisiana flavor this year, with five of the seventeen stories set along its levees and bayous, including James Lee Burke’s ‘Water People’ and ‘The Bug Man’ by Tim Gautreaux.

New Stories from the South 1996 (By:Shannon Ravenel)

The eleventh edition in a series of collections of Southern literature includes the work of such authors as William Faulkner, Robert Olen Butler, Ellen Douglas, David Gilbert, Annette Sanford, Jill McCorkle, and other notables.

New Stories from the South (By:Robert Olen Butler)

The twelfth in the annual series presents nineteen stories by established and up and coming Southern writers, along with the authors’ notes on the genesis of their stories and a list of magazines consulted by the editor.’

New Stories from the South 1998 (By:)

THE ONLY ANNUAL ANTHOLOGY SHOWCASING THE BEST SHORT FICTION WRITTEN IN AND ABOUT THE SOUTH. With a preface by Padgett Powell. The thirteenth edition of NEW STORIES FROM THE SOUTH proves that literature from and about the South continues to evolve. Whether it’s a surreal meditation by a man on night watch in contact with everything from space aliens to a charming Southern belle, or how life looks to two stock boys in a grocery store, or the stories hidden within the covert language of an art book, or the intricate jealousies that both cement and divide two couples, this newest collection of nineteen stories is proof positive that the literature of the South refuses to be pigeonholed. This year’s contributors include well established writers such as Mark Richard, Stephen Dixon, and Tim Gautreaux, in addition to original new voices carving out their own niches in ways that bode well for the future of Southern literature. Padgett Powell’s preface answers, on its own terms, the question ‘What Southern Literature Is.’ And each selection includes the story behind the story, giving readers a window into the mind of the writer. We continue to include an updated list of magazines consulted by the editor, along with a complete list of all the stories selected each year since the inception of the series in 1986. The 1998 edition features the following standout writers: Josh Russell, Wendy Brenner, John Holman, Tim Gautreaux, Mark Richard, Enid Shomer, Sara Powers, Molly Best Tinsley, Frederick Barthelme, Tony Earley, Padgett Powell, Nancy Richard, Michael Gills, George Singleton, Annette Sanford, Stephen Marion, Jennifer Moses, Scott Ely, Stephen Dixon. ‘Ravenel has shown a canny ability to spot emerging talent…
and time and again has included stories by writers before their novels widened their fame.’ The Anniston Star; ‘For readers who love short stories, finding one really good one is a pleasure. NEW STORIES is full of them.’ St. Petersburg Times.

New Stories from the South 1999 (By:)

It was an anthology that began simply enough: as a way to gather together the best kinds of writing going on in the South. It was also a way, back then, for editor Shannon Ravenel to keep tabs on who was writing what. Some of those voices that she heard first are now well known: Barbara Kingsolver, Robert Olen Butler, Marly Swick, Rick Bass, Abraham Verghese, James Lee Burke, Larry Brown.

Our goal is still the same to find the most original and affecting stories. And this year, in our newest tradition, we’re pleased to include a preface by Tony Earley, which calls into question the message of one of the most anthologized Southern stories of our time.

The 1999 edition gathers stories by: Michael Knight, Pinckney Benedict, Richard Schmitt, Clyde Edgerton, Andrew Alexander, Mary Clyde, Richard Bausch, Tony Earley, Michael Erard, Rick DeMarinis, Heather Sellers, Kurt Rheinheimer, Ingrid Hill, William Gay, Janice Daugharty, Mary Gordon, George Singleton, Tom Franklin Laura Payne Butler, and Wendy Brenner. An indispensable resource for aspiring writers, students, and readers of Southern fiction, New Stories from the South also includes the story behind each story. We continue to offer an updated list of magazines consulted by the editor, along with a complete list of all the stories selected each year since the series’ inception, in 1986.

New Stories from the South 2000 (By:)

Whether it’s the bodybuilder who picks up energy in the air, the rich girl who sees potential in the beer-drinking factory worker at her father’s cardboard plant, the girl who turns against her evangelist father to find the real Jesus, the aunt with a withered arm who may have influenced Flannery O’Connor, the feminist scholar trying to reason with a good old boy, or the young MFA student determined to write a good story, this year’s collection is about the connections these Southerners will to happen. Each story, as Ellen Douglas’s thoughtful preface says, testifies to our need to ‘feel and understand the significance of the buzzing blooming dying chaos of our experience.’ This fifteenth edition is rich with unforgettable characters and full of great moments of comedy and tragedy.

Twenty writers tell their stories in this year’s NSFS: A. Manette Ansay, Wendy Brenner, D. Winston Brown, Robert Olen Butler, Cathy Day, R.H.W. Dillard, Tony Earley, Clyde Edgerton, William Gay, Tim Gautreaux, Allan Gurganus, John Holman, Romulus Linney, Thomas H. McNeely, Christopher Miner, Chris Offutt, Margo Rabb, Karen Sagstetter, Mary Helen Stefaniak, Melanie Sumner

Each selection is accompanied by a look into the origin of the story. Readers will also find an updated list of magazines consulted by the editor for this edition and a complete list of all the stories selected each year since the series’ genesis in 1986.

New Stories from the South 2001

It would be easy to describe the stories in this year’s collection as typically Southern, if we only knew what that was. As Lee Smith writes in her engaging and provocative preface, the South is both as it always was and profoundly different. Some things have stayed the same: ‘As a whole, we Southerners are still religious, and we are still violent. We’ll bring you a casserole, but we’ll kill you, too.’ And some things have changed: many a Southerner spends more time in the mall than the kitchen, and many a Southerner is really a displaced Northerner. Still, there’s something about life below the Mason Dixon line that leads to evocative, hilarious, moving, authentic, rip your heart out stories. Maybe it’s true, as Lee Smith says, that ‘narrative is as necessary to us as air.’ Maybe narrative is in the air. This year’s collection ranges from small vacant towns to thriving Southern cities, tracking the likes of a violent paperhanger, an ambitious fiddler, a failed adman, and a boy who kidnaps his schoolbus driver. Nineteen standout writers make appearances in this year’s volume: John Barth, Madison Smartt Bell, Marshall Boswell, Carrie Brown, Stephen Coyne, Moira Crone, William Gay, Jim Grimsley, Ingrid Hill, Christie Hodgen, Nicola Mason, Edith Pearlman, Kurt Rheinheimer, Jane R. Shippen, George Singleton, Robert Love Taylor, James Ellis Thomas, Elizabeth Tippens, Linda Wendling. Each story is followed by an author’s note. Readers will also find an updated list of magazines consulted by Ravenel and a complete list of all the stories selected each year since the inception of the series in 1986.

New Stories from the South 2002 (By:)

As Larry Brown explains in this year’s preface, ‘This is all that I have, this land called North Mississippi, home of my father, and grand-fathers, and great-grandfathers, and luckily for me, it turns out to be always enough.’ It’s that land and everything around it-the intractable clay soil, the twisting rivers, the air heavy with humidity-that makes the South a character in its own right, and that permeates this year’s collection.

The stories in the seventeenth volume of New Stories from the South begin with the land or the water or the weather, but it’s their depth and richness that take us somewhere altogether new-the South, seen from a wholly new perspective, as if for the first time. From the mountains of Tennessee to the suburbs of New Orleans to a hollowed-out antebellum house to the center of Texas, this year’s New Stories from the South turns out to be ‘always enough.’

Nineteen writers make their mark in this year’s volume: Dwight Allen, Russell Banks, Brad Barkley, Doris Betts, William Gay, Aaron Gwyn, Ingrid Hill, David Koon, Andrea Lee, Romulus Linney, Corey Mesler, Lucia Nevai, Julie Orringer, Dulane Upshaw Ponder, Bill Roorbach, George Singleton, Kate Small, R. T. Smith, and Max Steele.

Each story is followed by the author’s notes about its origin. Readers will also find an updated list of the magazines consulted by Ravenel and a complete list of all the stories selected each year since the series’ inception in 1986.

New Stories from the South 2003 (By:)

Many famous writers later James Lee Burke, Barbara Kingsolver, Larry Brown, Tony Earley, William Gay, Ravenel still combs through over one hundred journals and magazines, regional and national, large and small, in search of the most talented authors coming out of the South. She still tracks down the newest voices before their breakouts, collecting the best renditions of the short story genre. New Stories from the South has become sine qua non in creative writing clas*ses, in Southern literature clas*ses, for any serious writer following the competition, and above all, for any lover of Southern literature. The stories in the eighteenth volume of NEW STORIES FROM THE SOUTH carry on that tradition. Among the eighteen writers making their mark in this year’s volume are Michael Knight, Donald Hays, John Dufresne, ZZ Packer, and Chris Offutt. This year’s preface is by the preeminent Southern humorist and NPR regular Roy Blount, Jr. Each story is followed by the author’s note about its origin. Readers will also find an updated list of magazines consulted by the editor, and a complete list of all the stories selected each year since the series’ inception.

New Stories from the South 2004 (By:)

As it approaches its twentieth year, Shannon Ravenel’s anthology has taken on a kind of cult status among readers, writers, teachers of short fiction, and trend watchers. It was here that some of the most well respected voices of the last two decades were first recognized, here that writers tell us they were discovered by agents, here that they landed their first book deals. And for readers looking for fresh, exciting short fiction, here is where they’ll find it. Ravenel has once again put together a stellar lineup of stories that makes this anthology not just a mark of distinction for writers, but a must have for short story aficionados and lovers of Southern fiction.

The stories in the nineteenth volume of New Stories from the South continue to spotlight the jewels of the South, both discovered and on the verge, featuring Edward P. Jones, George Singleton, Chris Offutt, Annette Sanford, Rick Bass, Silas House, Starkey Flythe, Michael Knight, and more. Each story is followed by the author’s note about its origin. With a preface by bestselling writer Tim Gautreaux, this volume promises to be another collector’s edition.

New Stories from the South, 2005 (By:)

Over the past two decades, New Stories from the Southhas been identified as one of the most significant and eagerly anticipated annual collections of American short stories Booklist. The quality of the selections and the skill of its editor have been lauded: Excitingly original stories from new and recently emergent writers make this now venerable annual a must for readers who mean to keep up with contemporary short fiction…
. Ravenel is one of the most resourceful and intelligent editors in the business Kirkus Reviews, starred. And NPR commentator Alex Chadwick sums it up best when he calls New Stories A good answer to the question, Why read fiction? NPR’s Morning Edition. It s in these pages that readers first encountered many of the writers whose work they ve now followed and enjoyed for years, and where they continue to find the freshest voices on the verge of stardom. In the 2005 volume, Ravenel treats us to works by Robert Olen Butler, Dennis Lehane, Moira Crone, Tom Franklin, Michael Parker, Rebecca Soppe, and Bret Anthony Johnston, among many others, and a preface by the inimitable Jill McCorkle. Whether it s a young woman taking her teacher to task for favoring his more beautiful students, or a couple on the edge of despair with their colicky baby, or a neighbor who takes too much interest in the girl next door, these selections illustrate the ways in which a good story can electrify a reader.

Best of the South (By:Shannon Ravenel)

Since 1986, New Stories from the South has brought the best short fiction of the year to the attention of a national audience. The series has been called the collection others should use as a model the Charlotte Observer, and for twenty years it has held to that standard. When Anne Tyler helped us celebrate the first ten years of the series in Best of the South, 1986 1995, the reviews were ecstatic. A triumph of authentic voices and unforgettable characters, said Southern Living. An introduction to some of the best writers in the world today, raved the Northwest Arkansas Times. Now that the anthology has reached its twentieth birthday, Anne Tyler has done it again. From the 186 stories found in the ten volumes from 1996 to 2005, she has picked her favorites and introduced them with warmth, insight, and her own brand of quiet literary authority. Once again, her choices reflect her love of the kind of generous fiction she has called spendthrift. Here are twenty stories by both famous and first time writers, from Lee Smith and Max Steele to Gregory Sanders and Stephanie Soileau that hold nothing back.

New Stories from the South (By:)

This enduring celebration of the short story only gets better with age and this year enlists the talents of guest editor Edward P. Jones, ‘one of the most important writers of his own generation and of the present day’ the Washington Post Book World .

In 1993, for the first time in his career, Edward P. Jones had a short story selected for an anthology. The story was ‘Marie.’ The anthology was the eighth volume of New Stories from the South. Now, the Pulitzer Prize winning novelist and short story writer returns to guest edit and introduce the twenty second volume of this distinguished anthology.

Jones brings to the task his artistic vision for the short story and finds its best practitioners, and not just those with well established names James Lee Burke, Rick Bass, Tim Gautreaux, George Singleton but writers just beginning their careers Holly Goddard Jones, Joshua Ferris, Angela Threat, Philipp Meyer. Jones chooses eighteen stellar stories for the 2007 collection, stories that hold a special resonance for him. As he says in his introduction, ‘For something to claim me long after the last sentence, I need a sense that the world, for even one character, has shifted, whether to a large or a tiny degree…
. I have tried to do my best to pick stories that are not, to use some of William Faulkner’s words, about the glands, but about the human heart.’

New Stories from the South 2008 (By:)

This year, acclaimed short story writer ZZ Packer chooses twenty distinctive stories representing the great number of voices and narratives coming out of the South. Some of the youngest and freshest talents on the literary horizon Bret Anthony Johnston, Kevin Brockmeier, Holly Goddard Jones accompany well known Southern stalwarts, including Pinckney Benedict, Clyde Edgerton, and Ron Rash. Their stories tell of life as it is now, a life not seen in romanticized Southern fiction, one where existence both urban and rural is as raw and risky as it is alluring. The energy of this collection courses through every one of Packer’s edgy, funny, and gritty selections.

New Stories from the South 2009 (By:Madison Smartt Bell)

In the twenty fourth volume of this distinguished anthology, Madison Smartt Bell chooses twenty one distinctive pieces of short fiction to tell the story of the South as it is now. This is a South that is still recognizable but no longer predictable. As he says, ‘to the traditional black and white recipe ever a tricky and volatile mixture have been added new shades and strains from Asia and Central and South America and just about everywhere else on the shrinking globe.’ Just as Katrina brought out into the open all the voices of New Orleans, so the South is now many things, both a distinctive region and a place of rootlessness. It’s these contradictions that Madison Smartt Bell has captured in this provocative and moving collection of stories.

Here you’ll find the well known Wendell Berry, Elizabeth Spencer, Jill McCorkle alongside those writers just making their debuts, in stories that show the South we always thought we knew, making itself over, and over.

New Stories from the South 2010 (By:)

In its 25th year, we’ve turned the venerable series over for the first time to a non Southerner, to see choices she’ll make about the shape of Southern short fiction.

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