Hannah Tinti's The Good Thief Makes off with the John Sargent Sr. First Novel Prize

Congratulations to Hannah Tinti for winning the Mercantile Library's John Sargent Sr. First Novel Prize* for The Good Thief (a result I learned on GalleyCat). As previously noted, Hannah is one of the three judges for The Story Prize this year, the editor of One-Story, and the author of a story collection, Animal Crackers. It's an accomplished book, well deserving of the honor.

*Hopefully, the Mercantile Library's Web site will soon reflect this outcome. As of the time this was posted (10:30 on Dec. 2), it hadn't. Speaking of which, the Rea Award for the Short Story still hasn't posted its latest winner--Amy Hempel--(announced Oct. 8!) on its site. Get on the stick, literary awards! We do our best to post The Story Prize winner within an hour or two of the announcement, and that involves changes throughout our site. We operate on a shoe-string budget, so I know it can be done.

The Book Review Has Spoken

The Sunday Book Review has published its list of 100 notable books for 2008. Among the 48 fiction and poetry titles (six altogether), eight were short story collections:

A BETTER ANGEL: Stories by Chris Adrian
YESTERDAY’S WEATHER by Anne Enright
UNACCUSTOMED EARTH by Jhumpa Lahiri
THE BOAT by Nam Le
DANGEROUS LAUGHTER: Thirteen Stories by Steven Millhauser
DICTATION: A Quartet by Cynthia Ozick
FINE JUST THE WAY IT IS: Wyoming Stories 3 by Annie Proulx
OUR STORY BEGINS: New and Selected Stories by By Tobias Wolff

In the Times' book blog, Paper Cuts, the editors explain the process: They started with a larger list of books reviewed during the course of the year (actually Dec. 2, 2007 through Nov. 30, 2008) and narrowed it down to 100. Duh!

In any event, as far as story collections go, these are very good ones--albeit obvious, mainstream choices. Lahiri's and Le's books also appeared on the Publishers Weekly and Amazon.com lists.

The 2008 Entries for The Story Prize

The final tally of books entered for The Story Prize this year is 72, from 55 publishers or imprints, adding up to a total of 973 stories. Between now and the end of the year, Julie Lindsey (the founder of the prize) and I will be doing a lot of reading in preparation for choosing our three finalists, which we'll announce in early January.

To select those books, Julie and I will meet and talk about the collections we each like best until we can settle on just three. Sometimes, we end that meeting without making final choices and take another day or so to think it over. It should be especially hard to narrow the field down to three this year because it looks like we'll have at least a dozen serious contenders. Stay tuned.

David Malouf Wins the Groundbreaking Australia-Asia Literary Award

Australian writer David Malouf is the first winner of the Australia-Asia Literary Award for The Collected Stories of David Malouf. He is the author of three previous story collections, as well as eight novels, six poetry collections, three nonfiction works, a play, and three opera librettos. The prize pays a generous $110,000 (Australian, which is the equivalent of roughly $62,500 U.S.).

The Australia-Asia Literary Award is for: "a book-length work of literary fiction written by an author resident in Australia or Asia, or a work primarily set in Australia or an Asian country. Works must have been either written in, or translated into, English and published in the preceding year." As one of the judges points out, this covers almost two-thirds of the world's population.

This is a very interesting book award--smart and daring--on several levels. In the first place, the creator and backer of the prize is the Government of Western Australia's Department of Culture and the Arts. It's hard to imagine any branch of any government in the U.S.--local, state, or federal--creating a literary award and funding it so generously. Secondly, not only print but also electronically published works are eligible--a very progressive notion. And finally, the award accepts entries of works in translation or with multiple authors (up to three). They've even established a split for translated works--$88,000 to the writer and $22,000 to the translator. That's always been one of the hurdles to judging translated work, and I think they are right to give the translator a share of the prize.

Another interesting feature is that each of the three judges has posted his or her notes on the Web site. This is from Pakistani writer (and University of Massachusetts MFA grad) Kamila Shamsie:

David Malouf is a writer of rare genius. Within the demands of the short story form he can give us a world containing a complex melange of characters, or he can take a single, seemingly insignificant moment and show all the depth and possibility it contains within it. There is tremendous power to his writing—regardless of whether he is describing a boys' encounter with nature or a woman's experience of heartbreak.

Malouf is a writer I've heard a lot about and, I must confess, I haven't read. We had hoped to consider The Collected Stories for The Story Prize last year, but we didn't receive an entry, probably because we require our finalists to attend our event, which could have been difficult for an Australian writer. In any event, some have compared his stories to those of Alice Munro and William Trevor. So I think it might be a good idea to catch up with his work soon.

Charles D'Ambrosio: For He's A Jolly Good Lannan Fellow

Short story writer Charles D'Ambrosio has won a $100,000 Lannan Foundation fellowship. Past winners known for writing short stories include: Robert Coover, Edwidge Danticat, Lydia Davis, Stuart Dybek, Deborah Eisenberg, Mavis Gallant, Denis Johnson, Edward P. Jones, Steven Millhauser, Lorrie Moore, Alice Munro, Cynthia Ozick, Grace Paley, George Saunders, Joanna Scott, David Foster Wallace, and John Edgar Wideman. It's a pretty impressive bunch, and that's not even the full list.

D'Ambrosio well deserves the honor. His 2006 short story collection, The Dead Fish Museum, which The Story Prize designated as a notable collection, is an excellent book. I particularly liked "The High Divide," "Drummond & Sons," and "The Scheme of Things," all of which first appeared in The New Yorker.

Authors who write short stories seem to do very well garnering literary honors, including the Whiting Writers' Awards and the MacArthur Foundation fellowships, in addition to the Lannan. It's when it comes to book awards for fiction that novels tend to dominate, which is one reason we created The Story Prize. Clearly, practitioners of the short story form (too bad there's not a term equivalent to "novelist") engender a lot of respect, which nobody can deny.

Author Introductions to Story Collections? Yea or Nay?

Many of the reviews of Stephen King's short story collection, Just After Sunset, have referred to King's introduction to the collection, which talks about when he was first starting out as a writer and wrote short stories, how he got away from writing them, and how editing The Best American Short Stories 2007 reawakened his interest in the form.

It's interesting to see how King's own summation has framed much of the discussion of his work. Many reviewers don't know how to talk about a short story collection as a whole. So, in a sense, an introduction can make a collection more reviewer friendly.

Still, most of the short story collections that I read don't have introductions. And those that do, tend to veer toward a genre, such as science/speculative fiction, horror/suspense, or mystery/crime. In some cases, a prominent writer in that genre will introduce another writer's collection, for instance George Pelecanos introduces Laura Lippman's Hardly Knew Her. (My intention is not to disparage so-called genres but to make a factual observation.)

In so-called literary short fiction, authors will sometimes introduce their own selected or collected works. For instance, Tobias Wolff opens Our Story Begins with "A Note from the Author" that addresses the question of whether or not an author should revisit (i.e. tinker with) earlier stories when putting together selected stories. (Notice he doesn't call it an "Introduction.") Wolff did, in fact, revisit earlier stories--and that's the sole focus of his brief note. And, like King's introduction, it has helped frame reviewers' discussion of his book.

Of course, ultimately, stories have to speak for themselves. And anyone who doesn't want an introduction can skip it. In addition, a popular writer like King often has a very public, ongoing relationship with his readers, who are likely to appreciate insight into his creative process. Truth is, you could ask why more writers don't share their back story and their insights with their readers.

Still, call me a traditionalist, but I generally like short story collections better without introductions. How do you feel about it?

How do you feel about short story collections that have introductions?
	I don't approve of introductions--the stories should speak for themselves.
	An introduction is sometimes okay. I take it on a case-by-case basis.
	I like to read introductions.
	I don't care. Readers can skip them if they want.
	Barack Obama
pollcode.com free polls

Give Us This Day Our Daily Nada

There's a restaurant in Granville, Ohio, called The Short Story Brasserie. I stumbled on this unexpectedly when I switched to Google Maps on the heels of a Web search for "short stories." The inspiration for the restaurant? Ernest Hemingway.

In the words of proprietor J. Norman Housteau:

I always envied Hemingway’s hunger for life. He bound the words in his stories together with his passion for food, wine, friends and travel.... This brasserie is intended to bring a world of flavor and culinary adventure to you in the same spirit that Hemingway brought the sights, sounds and flavors of the world to my house. I have always wanted to be a professional writer like Hemingway. Until then, please enjoy The Short Story.

The menu carries through on the literary conceit with appetizers listed under Introduction. Chilled small plates, hot small plates, and large plates are Parts I, II, and III. Dessert is the Dénoument, and coffee, tea, and after dinner drinks are the Footnotes (very postmodern). Personally I'd go with Rising Action for the appetizers, Climax for the entrées, Anticlimax for the desserts, and Resolution for the after dinner drinks.