Best New American Voices 2010 [Paperback]

John Kulka (Editor), Natalie Danford (Editor), Dani Shapiro (Editor)

Book Description

Series: Best New American Voices | Publication Date: October 15, 2009

Bestselling novelist and memoirist Dani Shapiro brings her expertise to this year’s volume of Best New American Voices. Now in its eleventh year, this series gathers the best fiction from hundreds of nominations submitted by writing programs such as the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and Johns Hopkins, and from summer conferences such as Sewanee and Bread Loaf. Joshua Ferris, Julie Orringer, Adam Johnson, William Gay, Lauren Groff, Rattawut Lapcharoensap, Maile Meloy, Amanda Davis, and Nam Le are just some of the acclaimed authors whose early work has appeared in this series since its launch in 2000. Discover for yourself the dazzling variety of great fiction being produced in the top writers' workships--with a complete list of contact information included--and find the best new American voices here first.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"A wonderful assortment of the coming attractions." Chicago Tribune"

About the Author

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.

Dani Shapiro is the author of six books, including the novels Black & White and Family History, and the bestselling memoir Slow Motion. Her stories and essays have appeared in The New Yorker, Granta, Ploughshares, One Story, and have been widely anthologized. She is Director of the Sirenland Writers Conference in Positano, Italy. She lives in Connecticut.

Product Details

• Paperback: 368 pages
• Publisher: Mariner Books; Original edition (October 15, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0156034255
• ISBN-13: 978-0156034258
• Product Dimensions: 8 x 5.6 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #888,529 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5.0 out of 5 stars Not what i expected--better!, August 20, 2011

By 

Kimberly Wade "Kimberly Todd Wade (author)" - See all my reviews

This review is from: Best New American Voices 2010 (Paperback)

My impression of the sort of writing that comes from writing programs was not good. I expected a lot of sameness, writers who sound alike. I got wonderful stories, each one written with a unique voice. This is the best collection I've read in years. I was particularly impressed by:

"Bethlehem Is Full" by Boomer Pinches, which begins with this startling opening line, "The abortion went well and there was no need to postpone their trip to Australia." The story doesn't go as expected, and the surprise ending is a heart-stopper.

"Lizard Man" by David James Poissant, a story about a man who finds out his son is gay and in defiance of the contemporary Hollywood cliché does not think it's cool. Growth happens through a strange adventure with an alligator.

I loved "Cape Town" by Claire O'Connor, the story of a 50 year-old cancer patient who travels with her adult daughter to South Africa, where they swim with sharks. Beautiful.

"Plato" by Timothy Scott is the story of a man coping with his wife's suicide, while developing a relationship with a young novitiate. I'm still thinking about its enigmatic ending.

My favorite, and the only fantasy, story in the collection is "Horusville" by Christian Moody. In Horusville, the trees have eyes. The POV character is a thirteen year-old boy artist in love with his art teacher, who also happens to be his older brother's fiancé. This sentence gives an example of Moody's high-octane prose, "Miss Mahogany, small as she was--and old, too, with wrinkled skin the same burnished red brown of her name--would beat such would-be book thieves so mercilessly with her yardstick that the pyrotechnic scarves holding her braids together would fly off, and then her hair would whip about so fiercely, all snakelike and crazy, that you could imagine the poor recipient of her wrath mistaking her yardstick's crack for the snap of poisoned fangs."

I was happy to Laura van den berg's "Up High in the Air." It also appeared in her debut collection, What the world will look like when all the water leaves us, which I reviewed last year. I gave it five stars.