I've said it before: Anyone who writes and publishes a short story collection has accomplished something significant. This is certainly true of the authors of the 85 books we read for The Story Prize in 2010. It was difficult to choose three finalists. And it was just as difficult to narrow the remaining field down to a reasonable number of other notable collections, but these are the ones that ultimately stood out for me:
- Things We Didn't See Coming by Steven Amsterdam (Pantheon)
- Miracle Boy by Pinckney Benedict (Press 53)
- If I Loved You, I Would Tell You This by Robin Black (Random House)
- Mattaponi Queen by Belle Boggs (Graywolf Press)
- Cheyenne Madonna by Eddie Chuculate (Black Sparrow Press)
- Vida by Patricia Engle (Black Cat)
- Extraordinary Renditions by Andrew Ervin (Coffee House Press)
- Before You Suffocate Your Own Fool Self by Danielle Evans (Riverhead Books)
- What I Didn't See by Karen Joy Fowler (Small Beer Press)
- Life Times by Nadine Gordimer (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
- Museum of the Weird by Amelia Gray (FC2)
- What He's Poised to Do by Ben Greenman (Harper Perennial)
- The Spot by David Means (Faber and Faber)
- Sourland by Joyce Carol Oates (Ecco)
- Further Adventures in the Restless Universe by Dawn Raffel (Dzanc Books)
- Burning Bright by Ron Rash (Ecco)
- Cut Through the Bone by Ethel Rohan (Dark Sky Books)
- Alone with You by Marisa Silver (Scribner)
- The Universe in Miniature in Miniature by Patrick Somerville (Fetherproof Books)
- Everything Here Is the Best Thing Ever by Justin Taylor (Harper Perennial)
- Cradle Book by Craig Morgan Teicher (BOA Editions)
- Aliens in the Prime of Their Lives by Brad Watson (W.W. Norton)
[Click on the titles to buy the book. Click on the author's name to read his or her guest post on this blog.]
