On Writing Short Stories

by Tom Bailey (Editor)

Overview

On Writing Short Stories, Second Edition, explores the art and craft of writing short fiction by bringing together nine original essays by professional writers and thirty-three examples of short fiction. The first section features original essays by well-known authors—including Francine Prose, Joyce Carol Oates, and Andre Dubus—that guide students through the process of writing. Focusing on the characteristics and craft of the short story and its writer, these essays take students from the workshopping process all the way through to the experience of working with agents and publishers. The second part of the text is an anthology of stories—many referred to in the essays—that give students dynamic examples of technique brought to life.

In this second edition, author-editor Tom Bailey brings the text up-to-date with new and revised essays, alongside classic pieces by Robert Coles and Frank Conroy and a foreword by Tobias Wolff.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780195395655
Publisher:	Oxford University Press
Publication date:	07/01/2010
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	456
Product dimensions:	6.10(w) x 9.10(h) x 1.20(d)

About the Author

Tom Bailey is the author of several books, including Crow Man Stories (2003) and the novels The Grace That Keeps This World (2006) and Cotton Song (2006), as well as A Short Story Writer's Companion (OUP, 2000). His short stories have been anthologized in the Pushcart Prizes, New Stories from the South, Streetsongs: New Voices in Fiction, and cited in The Best American Short Stories. Among other awards for his writing, he has received a National Endowment of the Arts Fellowship and a Newhouse Award from the John Gardner Foundation and was named winner of the 2006 Mississippi Institute of Arts and Letters Award for Fiction. He currently teaches in the Writers Institute at Susquehanna University, where he is a professor of English and Creative Writing.

Table of Contents

Foreword by Tobias Wolff
Preface
Contributors

Part One: On Writing Short Stories

Francine Prose, What Makes a Short Story
Joyce Carol Oates, Reading as a Writer: The Artist as Craftsman
Tom Bailey, Character, Plot, Setting and Time, Metaphor, and Voice
The Voice of Desire: Character
The Why? Behind the Power of Plot: Shaping the Short Story
The Lesser Angels of Fiction: Setting and Time
"The Connectedness of All Living Things": Metaphor
The Writer's Signature: Voice
Frank Conroy, The Writer's Workshop
Antonya Nelson. Whose Story Is It? The Anonymous Workshop
Robert Boswell After the Workshop: Transitional Drafts
Andre Dubus, The Habit of Writing.
Robert Cole, Why Write? Taking on the World
C. Michael Curtis, Publishers and Publishing

Part Two: Short Stories

Guy de Maupassant, The String
Anton Chekhov, The Lady with the Pet Dog
James Joyce, Eveline
Yukio Mishima, Patriotism
Ernest Hemingway, Hills Like White Elephants
Tillie Olsen, I Stand Here Ironing
William Faulkner, A Rose for Emily
John Steinbeck, The Chrysanthemums
Cynthia Ozick, The Shawl
Flannery O'Connor, Everything That Rises Must Converge
John Updike, A & P
Margaret Atwood, Happy Endings
Joyce Carol Oates, Heat
Raymond Carver, Cathedral
Mark Helprin, North Light
Jayne Anne Phillips, Wedding Picture, Cheers, Stripper, and The Powder of the Angles, and I'm Yours
Ron Hansen, Wickedness
David Leavitt, Braids
Jumpha Lahiri, A Temporary Matter
Tom Franklin, Alaska
Junot Diaz, Nilda
Rick Bass, The Fireman
Tom Bailey, Snow Dreams
Susan Perabo, The Payoff
Robert Boswell, The Darkness of Love
ZZ Packer, Brownies
Andre Dubus, A Father's Story
Antonya Nelson, Dick
Susan Mino, Lust
Tobias Wolff, Bullet in the Brain