The O. Henry Prize Stories 2017

by Laura Furman (Editor)

Overview

The O. Henry Prize Stories 2017 contains twenty breathtaking stories—by a vibrant mix of established and emerging writers—selected by the series editor from the thousands published in literary magazines over the previous year. The collection includes essays by the three eminent guest jurors on their favorite stories, observations from the winning writers on what inspired them, and a comprehensive resource list of the many magazines and journals, both large and small, that publish short fiction. 

“Too Good To Be True,” Michelle Huneven
“Something for a Young Woman,” Genevieve Plunkett
“The Buddhist,” Alan Rossi
“Garments,” Tahmima Anam
“Protection,” Paola Peroni
“Night Garden,” Shruti Swamy
“A Cruelty,” Kevin Barry
“Floating Garden,” Mary La Chapelle
“The Trusted Traveler,” Joseph O’Neill
“Blue Dot,” Keith Eisner
“Lion,” Wil Weitzel
“Paddle to Canada,” Heather Monley
“A Small Sacrifice for an Enormous Happiness,” Jai Chakrabarti
“The Bride and the Street Party,” Kate Cayley
“Secret Lives of the Detainees,” Amit Majmudar
“Glory,” Lesley Nneka Arimah
“Mercedes Benz,” Martha Cooley
“The Reason Is Because,” Manuel Muñoz
“The Family Whistle,” Gerard Woodward
“Buttony,” Fiona McFarlane

The jurors this year are David Bradley, Elizabeth McCracken, and Brad Watson.
For author interviews, photos, and more, go to www.ohenryprizestories.com

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780525432500
Publisher:	Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Publication date:	09/05/2017
Series:	The O. Henry Prize Collection
Pages:	368
Product dimensions:	5.18(w) x 7.99(h) x 0.80(d)

About the Author

Series editor LAURA FURMAN's work has appeared in The New Yorker, Vanity Fair, Ploughshares, The Yale Review, and other magazines. She is the founding editor of the highly regarded American Short Fiction (three-time finalist for the American Magazine Award). A former professor at the University of Texas, she lives in Austin. 

JUROR BIOS:
DAVID BRADLEY teaches at the University of Oregon and is the author of The Chaneysville Incident, winner of the PEN/Faulkner Award and a finalist for the National Book Award.

ELIZABETH MCCRACKEN, is the author of Thunderstruck and National Book Award finalist The Giant's House. She teaches at the University of Texas, Austin, and has received awards from the American Academy of Arts and Letters and the Guggenheim Foundation.

BRAD WATSON teaches at the University of Wyoming, Laramie. His novel The Heaven of Mercury was a finalist for the National Book Award, and his Aliens in the Prime of Their Lives was a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award.

Read an Excerpt

 Introduction by  Laura Furman
(Continues…)

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Excerpted from "The O. Henry Prize Stories 2017"
by .
Copyright © 2017 Laura Furman.
Excerpted by permission of Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

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Table of Contents

Introduction by Laura Furman, Series Editor
 
“Too Good To Be True,” Michelle Huneven
“Something for a Young Woman,” Genevieve Plunkett
“The Buddhist,” Alan Rossi
“Garments,” Tahmima Anam
“Protection,” Paola Peroni
“Night Garden,” Shruti Swamy
“A Cruelty,” Kevin Barry
“Floating Garden,” Mary La Chapelle
“The Trusted Traveler,” Joseph O’Neill
“Blue Dot,” Keith Eisner
“Lion,” Wil Weitzel
“Paddle to Canada,” Heather Monley
“A Small Sacrifice for an Enormous Happiness,” Jai Chakrabarti
“The Bride and the Street Party,” Kate Cayley
“Secret Lives of the Detainees,” Amit Majmudar
“Glory,” Lesley Nneka Arimah
“Mercedes Benz,” Martha Cooley
“The Reason Is Because,” Manuel Muñoz
“The Family Whistle,” Gerard Woodward
“Buttony,” Fiona McFarlane
  
Reading The O. Henry Prize Stories 2017: The Jurors on Their Favorites
     David Bradley on “Too Good To Be True” by Michelle Huneven
     Elizabeth McCracken on “Secret Lives of the Detainees” by Amit Majmudar
     Brad Watson on “Buttony” by Fiona McFarlane
 
Writing The O. Henry Prize Stories 2017: The Writers on Their Work
 
Publications Submitted

Editorial Reviews

"Widely regarded as the nation's most presitigious awards for short fiction." —The Atlantic Monthly

From the Publisher

2017-07-04
The venerable annual honors volume approaches its centenary but shows no signs of tiring out.There are few surprises but plenty of pleasures in the latest installment of the O. Henry Award anthology, in recent years edited by novelist and short story writer Furman. One pleasant surprise is that, finally, no one is trying to write like Raymond Chandler—or David Foster Wallace, for that matter. Another is that no matter how vignette-ish, most of the stories here entertain large ideas. There is refreshing attention to work by writers of South Asian origin, among them California-born Shruti Swamy, who writes affectingly of a single moment, full of symbolic portent, in which a dog confronts a cobra: "There is a depth that dogs' eyes have," she writes, "which snakes' eyes lack. Snakes' eyes are flat and uncompromising, and reveal no animating intelligence. Perhaps that's why we never trust them." As do so many others, the story ends on a sententious note, in the literal sense: "What you have left is what you have." Indeed. Martha Cooley's "Mercedes Benz" blends high-end cars, Janis Joplin, and visions of the Italian countryside arresting enough to make the reader book a flight to Rome, while Gerard Woodward's existentialist-tinged "The Family Whistle" relates a story of assumed identity that might have been a footnote to The Return of Martin Guerre. "You wouldn't believe the stories of his life then," says one character of the presumed con artist. "They amused me while we were in the camp, but only in the way that men together will be amused by such stories—in the real world they would have disgusted me." The strongest in the volume is Amit Majmudar's "Secret Lives of the Detainees," straight from the headlines, in which poetry defeats even the best-armed imperial force in the end; how real-world that scenario is may be debatable, but there's no arguing the beauty of the writing. Essential, as ever, for students and budding practitioners of the short story form.

Kirkus Reviews