Editor | Shannon Ravenel and Raymond Carver |
---|---|
Language | English |
Series | The Best American Short Stories |
Published | 1986 |
Publisher | Houghton Mifflin Harcourt |
Media type | Print (hardback & paperback) |
Pages | 325 |
ISBN | 0395383986 |
Preceded by | The Best American Short Stories 1985 |
Followed by | The Best American Short Stories 1987 |
The Best American Short Stories 1986, a volume in The Best American Short Stories series, was edited by guest editor Raymond Carver with Shannon Ravenel. [1]
The Kirkus Reviews ’ reviewer of Carver’s anthology expressed disappointment in this year’s edition and concluded that there were only two "standout exceptions to the general fog, though—and their work should be looked for with real curiosity in the future. But, otherwise, tired nags ran this course, on the whole." [2]
Short story writer and creative writing instructor K. L. Cook credits this anthology with his discovery and later acquaintance with Charles Baxter, one of the contributors, as well as his life-long addition to many other short story writers he first read in this volume. [3] In a review of the collection and selected entries for the Florida Flambeau , Robyn Allers notes that not only does the volume contain some "real gems", but also "more important to short story fans, collections like this one … introduce readers to new writers who haven’t yet achieved the recognition that accompanies frequent publication in the mass-market glossies like The New Yorker , Esquire and The Atlantic . [4] In The Boston Phoenix reviewer Tim Appelo noted that "It’s heartening to see up-and-comers crowd out big names, because it makes the collection fresher. These writers are young and hungry, and most of their work hits the spot." [5]
Author | Story | Source |
---|---|---|
Donald Barthelme | "Basil from Her Garden" | The New Yorker |
Charles Baxter | "Gryphon" | Epoch |
Ann Beattie | "Janus" | The New Yorker |
James Lee Burke | "The Convict" | The Kenyon Review |
Ethan Canin | "Star Food" | Chicago |
Frank Conroy | "Gossip" | Esquire |
Richard Ford | "Communist" | Antaeus |
Tess Gallagher | "Bad Company" | Ploughshares |
Amy Hempel | "Today Will Be a Quiet Day" | The Missouri Review |
David Michael Kaplan | "Doe Season" | The Atlantic |
David Lipsky | "Three Thousand Dollars" | The New Yorker |
Thomas McGuane | "Sportsmen" | Playboy |
Christopher McIlroy | "All My Relations" | TriQuarterly |
Alice Munro | "Monsieur les Deux Chapeaux" | Grand Street |
Jessica Neely | "Skin Angels" | New England Review and Bread Loaf Quarterly |
Kent Nelson | "Invisible Life" | The Virginia Quarterly Review |
Grace Paley | "Telling" | Mother Jones |
Mona Simpson | "Lawns" | The Iowa Review |
Joy Williams | "Health" | Tendril |
Tobias Wolff | "The Rich Brother" | Vanity Fair |
Raymond Clevie Carver Jr. was an American short story writer and poet. He published his first collection of stories, Will You Please Be Quiet, Please?, in 1976. His breakout collection, What We Talk About When We Talk About Love (1981), received immediate acclaim and established Carver as an important figure in the literary world. It was followed by Cathedral (1983), which Carver considered his watershed and is widely regarded as his masterpiece. The definitive collection of his stories, Where I'm Calling From, was published shortly before his death in 1988. In their 1989 nomination of Carver for the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, the jury concluded, "The revival in recent years of the short story is attributable in great measure to Carver's mastery of the form."
Carl Richard Jacobi was an American journalist and writer. He wrote short stories in the horror and fantasy genres for the pulp magazine market, appearing in such pulps of the bizarre and uncanny as Weird Tales, Ghost Stories, Startling Stories, Thrilling Wonder Stories and Strange Stories. He also wrote stories crime and adventure which appeared in such pulps as Thrilling Adventures, Complete Stories, Top-Notch, Short Stories, The Skipper, Doc Savage and Dime Adventures Magazine. Jacobi also produced some science fiction, mainly space opera, published in such magazines as Planet Stories. He was one of the last surviving pulp-fictioneers to have contributed to the legendary American horror magazine Weird Tales during its "glory days". His stories have been translated into French, Swedish, Danish and Dutch.
Tess Gallagher is an American poet, essayist, and short story writer. Among her many honors were a fellowship from the Guggenheim Foundation, National Endowment for the Arts award, Maxine Cushing Gray Foundation Award.
The Pushcart Prize is an American literary prize published by Pushcart Press that honors the best "poetry, short fiction, essays or literary whatnot" published in the small presses over the previous year. Magazine and small book press editors are invited to submit up to six works they have featured. Anthologies of the selected works have been published annually since 1976. It is supported and staffed by volunteers.
Ploughshares is an American literary journal established in 1971 by DeWitt Henry and Peter O'Malley in The Plough and Stars, an Irish pub in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Since 1989, Ploughshares has been based at Emerson College in Boston. Ploughshares publishes issues four times a year, two of which are guest-edited by a prominent writer who explores personal visions, aesthetics, and literary circles. Guest editors have been the recipients of Nobel and Pulitzer prizes, National Book Awards, MacArthur and Guggenheim fellowships, and numerous other honors. Ploughshares also publishes longform stories and essays, known as Ploughshares Solos, all of which are edited by the editor-in-chief, Ladette Randolph, and a literary blog, launched in 2009, which publishes critical and personal essays, interviews, and book reviews.
New Stories from the South is an annual compilation of short stories published by Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill between 1986 and 2010 and billed as the year's best stories written by Southern writers or about the Southern United States. The stories are collected from more than 100 literary magazines, including The Atlantic, Harper's Magazine, The New Yorker, the Oxford American, The Paris Review, Ploughshares, and The Southern Review. Shannon Ravenel, then the editor of the annual Best American Short Stories anthology, launched the New Stories from the South series in 1986 and compiled and edited every volume until 2006. To mark the third decade of the series, Algonquin invited author and John Simon Guggenheim Fellow Allan Gurganus to be guest editor.
The Best American Short Stories is a yearly anthology that's part of The Best American Series published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. Since 1915, the BASS has anthologized more than 2,000 short stories, including works by some of the most famous writers in contemporary American literature. Along with the O. Henry Awards, Best American Short Stories is one of the two "best-known annual anthologies of short fiction."
Dannis Peary is an American film critic and sports writer. He has written and edited many books on cinema and sports-related topics. Peary is most famous for his book Cult Movies (1980), which spawned two sequels, Cult Movies 2 (1983) and Cult Movies 3 (1988) and are all credited for providing more public interest in the cult movie phenomenon.
Prairie Schooner is a literary magazine published quarterly at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln with the cooperation of UNL's English Department and the University of Nebraska Press. It is based in Lincoln, Nebraska and was first published in 1926. It was founded by Lowry Wimberly and a small group of his students, who together formed the Wordsmith Chapter of Sigma Upsilon.
Epoch is a triannual American literary magazine founded in 1947 and published by Cornell University. It has published well-known authors and award-winning work including stories reprinted in The Best American Short Stories series and poems later included in The Best American Poetry series. It publishes fiction, poetry, essays, graphic art, and sometimes cartoons and screenplays, but no literary criticism or book reviews.
Robert Lacy is an American writer whose short stories and essays have been published in a large number of publications including The Best American Short Stories, Ploughshares, The Oxford American, Virginia Quarterly Review and The Gettysburg Review. He has also published several books of fiction and essays.
Twilight Zone: 19 Original Stories on the 50th Anniversary is an anthology of short stories written by various authors and edited by Carol Serling, the widow of series creator Rod Serling. Each story was written with themes or styles similar to The Twilight Zone episodes, including a narrated introduction and conclusion. Authors who contributed stories include Twilight Zone veterans Earl Hamner Jr., Alan Brennert, William F. Wu, and Rod Serling. Reviewers listed some of the better stories as being Kelley Armstrong's "A Haunted House of Her Own", Alan Brennert's "Puowaina" and Mike Resnick and Lezli Robyn's "Benchwarmer".
Carol Sklenicka is an American biographer and literary scholar known for her authoritative, full-scale biographies of two important figures in late twentieth-century American literature: acclaimed short story masters Raymond Carver and Alice Adams.
The bibliography of Raymond Carver consists of 72 short stories, 306 poems, a novel fragment, a one-act play, a screenplay co-written with Tess Gallagher, and 32 pieces of non-fiction. In 2009, the 17 stories collected in What We Talk About When We Talk About Love were published in their manuscript form, prior to Gordon Lish's extensive editing, under the title Beginners.
Les Standiford is an author and, since 1985, the Founding Director of the Florida International University Creative Writing Program in Miami, Florida. He also holds the Peter Meinke Chair in Creative Writing at Eckerd College in St. Petersburg, Florida. His most recent books have been narrative non-fiction historical works. His novels featuring the character "John Deal" put him in the Miami School of crime fiction, whose progenitors are Charles Willeford and John D. MacDonald, and which includes Elmore Leonard, Jeff Lindsay, Carl Hiaasen, James W. Hall, Paul Levine, Edna Buchanan, and Barbara Parker.
Colin Harvey was a British science fiction writer, editor, and reviewer. He published six novels and more than 30 short stories.
The Best American Short Stories 1987, a volume in The Best American Short Stories series, was edited by guest editor Ann Beattie with Shannon Ravenel.
Shannon Ravenel, née Harriett Shannon Ravenel, is an American literary editor and co-founder of Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill. There she edited the annual anthology New Stories from the South from 1986 to 2006. She was series editor of the Houghton Mifflin annual anthology The Best American Short Stories from 1977 to 1990.
The Best American Short Stories 1988, a volume in The Best American Short Stories series, was edited by Shannon Ravenel and by guest editor Mark Helprin. In announcing the publication of this annual edition, Publishers Weekly noted that it is an "at times inspired anthology which draws from small and big-gun literary magazines in equal measures [and] is heralded by a sonorous, sagacious introduction..." while the reviewer at Kirkus Reviews described Mark Helprin's introduction as a "John-Gardneresque screed."
The Best American Short Stories 1990, a volume in The Best American Short Stories series, was edited by Shannon Ravenel and by guest editor Richard Ford.