Short Stories: A Reading

Ann Beattie has been included in four O. Henry Award Collections, in John Updike’s The Best American Short Stories of the Century, and in Jennifer Egan’s The Best American Short Stories 2014. In 2000, she received the PEN/Malamud Award for achievement in the short story. In 2005, she received the Rea Award for the Short Story. Beattie is a member of The American Academy of Arts and Letters and of The American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Her first story collection in ten years is The State We're In: Maine Stories (Scribner), a series of linked stories told through the voices of vivid and engaging women of all ages. The State We're In explores their doubts and desires and reveals the unexpected moments and glancing epiphanies of daily life.

A finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, Luis Alberto Urrea is the bestselling author of The Devil's Highway, The Hummingbird's Daughter, Into the Beautiful North, and Queen of America, among others. He has won the Lannan Literary Award, the Pacific Rim Kiriyama Prize, an American Book Award, the Christopher Award, and an Edgar Award, among other honors. He is a distinguished professor of creative writing at the University of Illinois-Chicago. Urrea reveals his mastery of the short form in his new book The Water Museum: Stories (Little, Brown and Company) Examining the borders between one nation and another, between one person and another, Urrea reveals his mastery of the short form. This collection includes the Edgar-award winning "Amapola" and his now-classic "Bid Farewell to Her Many Horses," which had the honor of being chosen for NPR's Selected Shorts not once, but twice.

Valerie Martin is the author of ten novels, including The Ghost of the Mary Celeste, The Confessions of Edward Day, Trespass, Mary Reilly, Italian Fever, and Property; three collections of short fiction; and a biography of Saint Francis of Assisi, titled Salvation. She has been awarded grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and the John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship, as well as the Kafka Prize and Britain's Orange Prize. Sea Lovers: Selected Stories (Nan A. Talese) is her latest collection of short fiction. The twelve stories in this collection showcase Martin's enviable control, precision, and grace and are organized around her three fictional obsessions—the natural world, the artistic sphere, and stunning transformations. Exploring themes of obsession, justice, passion, and duplicity, these drolly macabre stories buzz with tension.