The Pushcart Prize XXV: Best of the Small Presses 2001 Edition - Softcover

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1888889276 ISBN 13: 9781888889277

Publisher: Pushcart Press, 2001

Synopsis

The quarter-century edition of a "distinguished annual literary event" (Anne Tyler, New York Times Book Review) For its twenty-fifth year, The Pushcart Prize surpasses itself with a stunning presentation of new and celebrated authors.

Over sixty stories, essays, and poems appear in this landmark edition, picked from more than 5,000 nominations. Over the years more than 400 presses have been honored with reprints in The Pushcart Prize, the most praised literary series in America: winner of the Carey-Thomas Award, named a Notable Book of the Year by The New York Times Book Review, picked for several Book-of-the-Month Club selections, and hailed by Publishers Weekly as "among the most influential in the development of the American book business in the past century and a quarter." "The single best measure of the state of affairs in American literature today."―New York Times Book Review "[A]mong the most influential [series] in the development of the American book business in the past century and a quarter."―Publishers Weekly "The Pushcart Prize is essential."―Library Journal "Those who despair of finding good writing in mass media America need look no further than The Pushcart Prize."―Booklist)

About this title

Review

Looking back on his 25 years of editing the Pushcart Prize Best of the Small Presses anthology, Bill Henderson writes, "I was somewhat of a fool but I thought at least 'a holy fool' as Ted Hoagland described us small press types in his introduction to PPXVI." The term "holy fool" might be a red flag for some readers: Does this mean Henderson prints writing that's good for you, but no good? Rest assured that the Pushcart Prize is, was, and ever shall be virtuous and fun to read.

This 25th edition is by way of being a celebration of this vital series--one of the most fascinating pieces in the collection being, simply, a list in the back of the book of "Presses featured in the Pushcart Prize editions since 1976." Their very titles give an idea of the breadth, excellence, and sheer weirdness of the Pushcart project. You'll find Black Scholar, Prairie Schooner, Revista Chicano-Riquena, North Dakota Quarterly, and something called, rather evocatively, Lucille.

This year's collection, as befits a silver anniversary edition, is full of uncompromising work from writers both well known and unknown. It starts off in an elegiac mood with "The Anointed," a lovely, melancholic story by Kathleen Hill that recalls Alice Mattison and was also collected in the 2000 edition of the Best American Short Stories. Things get a bit hotter with Sharon Doubiago's poem "How to Make Love to a Man": "Remember like gripping / a tennis racket." Just to keep things au courant for 2000, there's "Two Prayers," a short, sharp shock of a story by Paul Maliszewski, collected from Dave Eggers' hip-to-be-square magazine-in-a-box McSweeney's. The elegant memoirist Patricia Hampl wanders through a minefield of memory, mother, and the meaning of writing. In fact, much of the writing collected here reflects on writing: Seamus Heaney asks, "What good is poetry?" and Beth Ann Fennelly reveals "the irony of metaphor: / you are closest to something / when naming what it is not." Not much has been left unnamed in 25 years of defiantly brainy story-mongering. --Claire Dederer

About the Author

Bill Henderson is the founder and editor of the Pushcart Prize. He received the 2006 National Book Critic Circle’s Lifetime Achievement Award and the Poets & Writers / Barnes & Noble Writers for Writers Award. He is also the author of several memoirs, including All My Dogs: A Life. The founder of the Lead Pencil Club, Henderson lives on Long Island and In Maine where he runs the Pushcart bookstore – “the world’s smallest bookstore.”

About this edition

• Publisher: Pushcart Press
• Publication date: 2001
• ISBN 10: 1888889276
• ISBN 13: 9781888889277
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 600
• Editor: Henderson Bill