The Slow Release: Stories about Death from the Flannery O'Connor Award for Short Fiction (Flannery O'Connor Award for Short Fiction Ser.) - Softcover

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0820355313 ISBN 13: 9780820355313

Publisher: University of Georgia Press, 2019

Synopsis

Death, that ending of all endings, is the shared concern of these stories, which have been chosen from among the hundreds that have appeared in the prestigious Flannery O’Connor Award for Short Fiction series.

More than seventy volumes, which include approximately eight hundred stories, have won the Flannery O’Connor Award. This stunning trove of always engaging, often groundbreaking short fiction is the common source for this anthology on death–and for planned anthologies on such topics as work, family, animals, children, and more.

Most of the expected ways by which we take our leave are covered here: accident, murder, suicide, illness, old age. Perhaps less expected is how, in these stories, a matter we’d rather not think about becomes the stuff of fiction so compelling that we can’t stop thinking about it.

How can something so final and certain spread so much ambiguity in its wake? What did we think of the departed, and what did they think of us? How long will they be around―in our hearts and heads–even after they’re gone? How will we forgive those who may have caused the death of a loved one? These fifteen stories give us many new ways of looking not only at death but at the lives that must go on in its aftermath.

About this title

About the Author

ETHAN LAUGHMAN has worked in both the editorial and marketing departments of the University of Georgia Press. Among the few who have read every Flannery O’Connor Award-winning volume, he has collaborated closely with the series' authors in compiling these new anthologies.

Review

The Flannery O'Connor Award series features some of the finest writing in contemporary American fiction over the past few decades. It has introduced me to several exciting new writers. Arranging the stories thematically in these new anthologies will allow these writers to resonate off one another and reveal the concerns and obsessions of today's fiction. (Arsen Kashkashian, buyer, Boulder Book Store)

About this edition

• Publisher: University of Georgia Press
• Publication date: 2019
• ISBN 10: 0820355313
• ISBN 13: 9780820355313
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 254
• Editor: Laughman Ethan