About the Author:
Born in 1919, William Abrahams published four successful novels and a number of poems before finding his true calling as an editor. He presided over the O. Henry Awards for more than 30 years starting in 1965. Abrahams also worked as the west coast editor of Atlantic Monthly Press and collaborated on nonfiction books with his partner, Peter Stansky. He passed away in 1998.
From Publishers Weekly:
The tellers of these 19 tales constitute a pantheon of rising or already established young writers, including first-prize winner Alice Walker, with "Kindred Spirits," a vignette about a young black woman returning home after divorcing her white husband, and special-award winner Joyce Carol Oates, whose "Master Race" recounts in spare and elegant prose the sexual assault in Germany of a youngish American academic by a black G.I. In many ways more compelling, however, are Bobbie Ann Mason's "Big Bertha Stories," a blinding insight into the mind of a man hounded by memories of Vietnam; John L'Heureux's "The Comedian," a metaphysical tour de force about a standup comic who becomes pregnant with a baby whose blithe in utero singing drowns out the arguments for abortion; Stephanie Vaughn's "Kid MacArthur," a boy growing up in an army family, learning to use guns before pencils, reluctantly going off to war and returning a militant vegetarian, shrinking from any violation of flesh. These and several other stories capture and involve the reader: they are written with grace, authority and bitter knowledge, and despite their verbal brevity cast a long shadow that is deeply etched and hard to dispel. BOMC selection.
Copyright 1986 Reed Business Information, Inc.
"About this title" may belong to another edition of this title.