The Pushcart Book of Short Stories: The Best Short Stories from a Quarter-Century of The Pushcart Prize Book

The best short stories as selected from the first quarter-century of the celebrated Pushcart Prize series. Since 1976, The Pushcart Prize has been "the single best measure of the state of affairs in American literature today," according to the New York Times Book Review. Many of today's celebrated short story authors received their first national recognition in the Pushcart Prize; over the years the series has tracked the development of the form, encompassing all its enthusiasms from traditional to experimental in an unsurpassed eclectic gathering. Over 500 stories from all the editions were considered for this memorable and enduring volume, and the final selections include some of the major writers of our time, almost all of them discovered in The Pushcart Prize at the start of their vocations. The list includes Raymond Carver, John Irving, David Kranes, Lynne Sharon Schwartz, Jayne Anne Phillips, Cynthia Ozick, Janet Peery, Liza Wieland, Susan Minot, Mona Simpson, Tim O'Brien, Rick Bass, Richard Ford, Alistair MacLeod, Padgett Powell, Josip Novakovich, Ha Jin, Bobbie Ann Mason, Rick Moody, and many more.

Author Biography: Bill Henderson is the author of The Kid That Could, a novel, and three memoirs, His Son, Her Father and Tower. He is the publisher and founder of Pushcart Press and the editor of the acclaimed Pushcart Prize series. He lives on Long Island and in Maine.

Publishers Weekly

For almost three decades, Pushcart has provided an alternate outlet for quality small press writers, and the list of authors included in this collection of 44 stories reads like a "who's who" of successful fiction writers. Selected from work published over the past 25 years, most of the stories are by well-known figures, like John Irving, Susan Minot, Richard Ford, Raymond Carver and Joyce Carol Oates; a respectable number of lesser-known contributors, like Gayle Baney Whittier and Katherine Min, are squeezed in between old favorites. On the whole, the collection reflects a bias toward American authors who rely heavily on well-developed narrative in their material, and the quality throughout is high. Landmark stories like Carver's "A Small Good Thing" stand comfortably alongside quirkier efforts like Padgett Powell's "Typical," Ford's "Communist" and Charles Baxter's classically constructed "Harmony of the World." What's missing from the collection is more than a smattering of stories from different cultures, and minority authors seem woefully underrepresented given the major movement toward multicultural fiction in the last decade. The book also contains little more than a whiff of the trend toward experimentation taken up by authors of avant-garde stories and "short-shorts," which have become a staple of many collections in the last few years. That omission seems especially startling considering that many experimental authors get their start in the world of the small press. Still, this is a rewarding and satisfying effort that lands squarely in the mainstream of quality fiction, despite the founder's claim that Pushcart authors represent the "secret life of our culture." (Oct. 15)Forecast: Pushcart's reputation will make this collection stand out, as will the roster of big-name contributors. Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.