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Presents over seventy short stories five pages long or less by such American authors as Joyce Carol Oates, Ray Bradbury, Langston Hughes, and Raymond Carver, and includes authors' commentary on the genre.
This book proposes a study of a new postmodern prose fiction genre, the short-short story. Considerations of generic classifications and boundaries are followed by an historical overview and analysis of short fiction from the nineteenth to twenty-first centuries, especially under the influence of the Russian Anton Chekhov, who is regarded as the father of the modern short story. The postmodern short-short story is seen as emerging from this trend, a hybrid genre with characteristics of the narrative language of her prose genres such as the short story and the journalistic writing. The cluster of features, such as condensation, lack of character development, surprise endings, etc., which is seen as characteristic of the short-short story, are discussed, and ten examples are summarized and analyzed, including two traditional short stories for contrast. It is seen that the short-short story may be further broken into what is called “the new sudden fiction” and the even shorter and more radical “flash fiction.”
Long regarded as an undervalued and marginalised genre, the short story is undergoing a renaissance. The Short Story celebrates its unique appeal. Practitioners and scholars address the issues facing short story criticism in the 21st century. Author A.L. Kennedy shares the pleasures and frustrations of writing the short story in the literary marketplace. This is followed by an assessment of recent attempts to promote short story readership in the UK. Other contributors look at forms such as the short-short and the short story sequence. The range of authors discussed includes Martin Amis, Anita Desai, Salman Rushdie and James Joyce. The short story is the most international of genres; this is...
This Companion provides an accessible overview of the contexts, periods, and subgenres of English-language short fiction outside of North America.
Winner of the 2nd Annual Rose Metal Press Short Short Chapbook Contest, judged by Robert Shapard
The eagerly anticipated anthology from the editors who coined the term “flash,” with stories by today’s best fiction writers. After publication of the first Flash Fiction anthology over a decade ago, “flash” became part of the creative writing lexicon for readers, writers, students, and teachers. In this follow-up collection, the editors once again tackle the question: “How short can a story be and truly be a story?” Determined to find the best flashes from America in the twenty-first century, James Thomas and Robert Shapard searched everywhere for stories that were not merely good but memorable. Moving, and certainly unforgettable, this collection includes stories from the best and most popular fiction writers of our time, including Ron Carlson, Robert Coover, Steve Almond, Amy Hempel, A. M. Homes, Grace Paley, and Paul Theroux. In addition, Rick Moody properly defines armoire, Lydia Davis delves into a world of cats, and Dave Eggers explores narrow escapes. Over and over, these stories prove that often less is more.
A spectacular new anthology of the best short-short fiction from across the United States. It has been more than thirty years since the term “flash fiction” was first coined, perfectly describing the power in the brevity of these stories, each under 1,000 words. Since then, the form has taken hold in the American imagination. For this latest installment in the popular Flash Fiction series, James Thomas, Sherrie Flick, and John Dufresne have searched far and wide for the most distinctive American voices in short-short fiction. The 73 stories collected here speak to the diversity of the American experience and range from the experimental to the narrative, from the whimsical to the gritty. Featuring fiction from writers both established and new, including Aimee Bender, K-Ming Chang, Bonnie Jo Campbell, Bryan Washington, Robert Scotellaro, and Luis Alberto Urrea, Flash Fiction America is a brilliant collection, radiating creativity and bringing together some of the most compelling and exciting contemporary writers in the United States.