Best New American Voices 2000 » (2000)

John Kulka is executive editor-at-large at Harvard University Press and lives in Connecticut.

Natalie Danford is a freelance writer and book critic whose work has appeared in People, Salon, the Los Angeles Times, the Chicago Sun-Times, and many other publications. She is the author of a novel, Inheritance, and lives in New York City.

The freshest, most original new voices in American fiction today, selected by Tobias Wolff.

Culled from over one hundred prestigious writing programs around the United States and Canada, Best New American Voices 2000 offers a remarkable panoply of writing talent that showcases the literary stars of tomorrow. Included here are twenty of the finest stories to come out of such programs as Breadloaf, the Sewanee Conference, the Banff Centre for the Arts, the University of Iowa and the PEN/Prison Writing Committee, as nominated by the directors of those programs. Represented are all facets of North American life, a diverse collection of visions and voices that will satisfy the most exacting of short-story readers. This dynamic collection is must-reading for all fans of innovative, cutting-edge new writing.

About the Authors:

Tobias Wolff is a National Book Award finalist and has received the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for biography. He is the author of This Boy's Life, In Pharoah's Army, and The Night in Question.

John Kulka, a former bookseller, is at work on a novel and lives in Brooklyn, NY.

Natalie Danford is a book critic whose work has appeared in the Boston Globe and the Washington Post, among other publications. She lives in New York City.

Publishers Weekly

In compiling this anthology, Wolff sidestepped the prestigious literary journals and popular magazines publishing serious fiction, and collected 20 polished short stories from more than 100 North American writing programs and conferences, including the Bread Loaf Conference, the Banff Centre for the Arts, the Iowa Writers Workshop and the PEN/Prison Writing Committee. All the entries here are by emerging writers, many still studying their craft, but the quality of the work showcased is world class. The longest and most outstanding entry is Jennifer Vanderbe's "The Hatbox," an intricate look at the lives of three generations of women and the cumbersome secret that ties them together. The piece exhibits relaxed, old-fashioned storytelling reminiscent of W. Somerset Maugham. The opening story, "In Cuba I Was a German Shepherd" by Ana Menendez, is a litany of humorous anecdotes zeroing in on the plight of wealthy and educated Cubans who fled to the U.S. only to find their credentials useless and menial employment their only way of surviving. "The Tower Pig" by Scott Antworth captures a moment of compassion and understanding between a hard-nosed guard and the prisoner he is escorting to a funeral. Merrill Feitell's witty and moving "Bike New York" skillfully portrays the inner turmoil of a soon-to-be-married man on an unplanned, thought-provoking jaunt with a teenage girl. Other writers to watch are Ladette Randolph, Shimon Tanaka, William Gay and Maile Meloy. While unfamiliar names today, these voices are likely to show up in Best American Short Stories and The O. Henry Prize Stories in years to come. (Nov.) Copyright 2000 Cahners Business Information.