The O. Henry Prize Stories 2006: The Best Stories of the Year (Prize Stories: The O. Henry Awards)

A radiant reflection of contemporary fiction at its best, The O. Henry Prize Stories 2006 features stories from locales as diverse as Russia, Zimbabwe, and the rural American South. Series editor Laura Furman considered thousands of stories in hundreds of literary magazines before selecting the winners, which are accompanied here by short essays from each of the three eminent jurors on his or her favorite story, as well as observations from all twenty prize winners on what inspired them. Ranging in tone from arch humor to self-deluding obsessiveness to fairy-tale ingenuousness, these stories are a treasury of potential classics.

"Series editor Furman (Drinking with the Cook) casts a wide net in the latest installment of the long running award collection, aided by 'jurors' Kevin Brockmeier, Francine Prose and Colm Tibn, whose functions remain impressively unclear. Most of the prize stories turn on romance: in Alice Munro's 'Passion' (already published in her collection Runaway), a Canadian waitress falls for her fianc's alcoholic brother when he mends her cut foot at a Thanksgiving family dinner. Behind the noir gravities of 'Sault Ste. Marie,' by the American David Means loom the long shadows of The Postman Always Rings Twice; in Xu Xi's 'Famine,' a middle-aged school teacher from Hong Kong attempts to rid herself of her aged parents' thrift through a blowout at the Plaza. Others stories turn surreal. David Lawrence Morse takes us to Ceta, a society that lives on the back of a great whale (in 'Conceived'), while in Stephanie Reents's 'Disquisition on Tears,' a recluse is visited by an intrusive, hectoring woman without a head. The best story in the book might be Pulitzer Prize — winner Edward P. Jones's 'Old Boys, Old Girls,' in which a battered antihero feels the powerful lure of innocence as he meets family members born during his incarceration for murder in a powerful, moving encounter." Publishers Weekly (Copyright Reed Business Information, Inc.)

"Widely regarded as the nation's most prestigious awards for short fiction" ("Atlantic Monthly"), the O. Henry Prize honors 20 of the year's best short stories.

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 professor of English at the University of Texas at Austin, she teaches in the graduate James A. Michener Center for writers. She lives in Austin.

Introduction ?
Laura Furman, Series Editor

Old Boys, Old Girls ?
Edward P. Jones, The New Yorker

You Go When You Can No Longer Stay ?
Jackie Kay, Granta

Mule Killers ?
Lydia Peelle, Epoch

The Broad Estates of Death ?
Paula Fox, Harper's Magazine

The Pelvis Series ?
Neela Vaswani, Epoch

Conceived ?
David Lawrence Morse, One Story

The Dressmaker's Child ?
William Trevor, The New Yorker

Disquisition on Tears ?
Stephanie Reents, Epoch

Sault Ste. Marie ?
David Means, Harper's Magazine

Unction ?
Karen Brown, The Georgia Review

?80s Lilies ?
Terese Svoboda, Indiana Review

Passion ?
Alice Munro, The New Yorker

The Center of the World ?
George Makana Clark, The Georgia Review

Wolves ?
Susan Fromberg Schaeffer, Prairie Schooner

Girls I Know ?
Douglas Trevor, Epoch

The Plague of Doves ?
Louise Erdrich, The New Yorker

Famine ?
Xu Xi, Ploughshares

Puffed Rice and Meatballs ?
Lara Vapnyar, Zoetrope: All-Story

Letters in the Snow — for kind strangers and unborn children — for the ones lost and most beloved ?
Melanie Rae Thon, One Story

Window ?
Deborah Eisenberg, Tin House

Reading The O. Henry Prize Stories 2006 ?
The Jurors on Their Favorites
Kevin Brockmeier on "Old Boys, Old Girls" by Edward P. Jones
Francine Prose on "Window" by Deborah Eisenberg
Colm Tóibín on "Passion" by Alice Munro

Writing The O. Henry Prize Stories 2006 ?
The Authors on Their Work

Recommended Stories ?

Publications Submitted ?

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