You Pick This Year’s Best Short Story Collections

By Neal 

short-story-sampling1.jpgWhen the 2007 Story Prize judges were named yesterday, I invited you to identify some of the short story collections you thought might end up on their longlist, in addition to my early suggestion of National Book Award nominees Lydia Davis‘s Varieties of Disturbance and Jim Shepard‘s Like You’d Understand, Anyway. Here’s what you’ve come up with so far:

  • Later at the Bar, Rebecca Barry
  • Why the Devil Chose New England for His Work, Jason Brown
  • Twenty Grand, Rebecca Curtis
  • Famous Fathers and Other Stories, Pia Z. Ehrhardt
  • Human Resources, Josh Goldfaden
  • Beethoven Was One-sixteenth Black, Nadine Gordimer
  • Sunstroke and Other Stories, Tessa Hadley
  • 20th Century Ghosts, Joe Hill
  • No One Belongs Here More Than You, Miranda July
  • Bloodletting & Miraculous Cures, Vincent Lam
  • Dead Boys, Richard Lange
  • The Complete Stories, David Malouf
  • The Faith Healer of Olive Avenue, Manuel Muñoz
  • Refresh, Refresh, Benjamin Percy
  • Throw Like a Girl, Jean Thompson
  • Mothers & Sons, Colm Toibin

Curtis, Percy, and Thompson are among the writers who have contributed to the “Selling Shorts” series at Beatrice.com, where I’ve also got some other prospective candidates. And I imagine we could come up with twice as many more, if we kept at it.

(clockwise from top left: Lam, Curtis, July, Percy, and Thompson)