Scribners Best of the Fiction Workshops 1998

by Natalie Danford (Editor), Carol Shields (Editor), John Kulka (Editor)

Overview

From Simon & Schuster, Scribner's Best of the Fiction Workshops 1998 showcases the most exciting and innovative invoice in North American fiction from 1998.

Gathered from 100 different workshops, these remarkably diverse stories possess the quality of works by more established authors, while offering the pleasure of discovering the unpredictable and irresistible voices of an up-and-coming generation .

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780684838366
Publisher:	Touchstone
Publication date:	02/24/1998
Series:	Scribner's Best of the Fiction Workshops
Edition description:	Original
Pages:	400
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.50(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

Natalie Danford is a freelance writer and book critic whose work has appeared in People, Salon, the Los Angeles Times, the Chicago Sun-Times, and many other publications.

Editorial Reviews

For many years, it seemed that young writers took the dictum "write what you know" as a license to create endless highly personalized stories of suburban malfeasance. Judging from this collection, those days are long gone. Not every work is flawlessthere are awkward dialogues and oblique narratives that are more maladroit than experimental. Whatever their faults, however, most of the 22 contributors here are willing to imagine being someone else, somewhere else. Some of the best stories are surrealistically inventive: Natasha Waxman's account of a college dropout's transmogrification into a primitive state; Tenaya Rahel Darlington's eerie tale of Poe-like obsession; Christopher A. Pasetto's slyly funny story of a teenage conspiracy theorist's first love. And even the less magical contributions dare to go beyond the merely confessional, as authors tackle characters of the opposite sex and wildly varying ages. At its strongest and weakest, the second installment in this series is heartening evidence of courage in the classroom and on the page. (Feb.)

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

This is the second in an annual series, which collects the best short fiction from graduate workshops in the United States and Canada. Guest editor Carol Shields, author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel Stone Diaries (LJ 1/94), selected the collection of 22 stories from among 234 submissions proffered via 119 writing programs. Like its predecessor, this new volume introduces new voices for lovers of short fiction looking for the next Flannery O'Connor or Isaac Bashevis Singer. This year's collection has more experimental work and a greater number of international settings than last year's. Picking favorites is difficult, but strong praise goes to Julie Otsuka's "Evacuation Order No. 19," about a Japanese American family facing internment during World War II, and to Carolyn Moon's "Through the Timber," a tale of two brothers confronting a demanding father. For all literary collections.Faye A. Chadwell, Univ. of Oregon, Eugene

Library Journal