The Pushcart Prize Xxix: Best Of The Small Presses, 2005 Edition - Hardcover

Bill Henderson; The Pushcart Prize Editors

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1888889403 ISBN 13: 9781888889406

Publisher: Pushcart Press, 2004

Synopsis

An annual collection of more than sixty of the prior year's top selected short stories, essays, and poems as published in literary magazines and small presses is complemented by an index to the series and a listing of hundreds of outstanding presses and authors.

About this title

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.”

Reviews

Henderson is right on the mark when he writes in his introduction that it has been a "vintage year" for this annual celebration of small magazines and presses—institutions that are anything but diminutive in their commitment to the art of the written word. From China to Greece, from India to Italy, this year's collection offers original, pithy commentary on everything from globalization and terrorism to relationships and family values in short works of fiction, nonfiction and poetry. In Deb Olin Unferth's "Juan the Cell Phone Salesman," a mother sets her daughter up with a man who turns out to be a rather unsavory character. In Jack Herlihy's "The Core," a young boy faces and embraces death along with his funeral-obsessed father. Russell Working's "The Irish Martyr" and Elizabeth Kadetsky's "The Poison that Purifies You" both grapple with issues of terrorism, the latter detailing the story of a man living in Delhi who is kidnapped by Kashmiri rebels in an eerily nonchalant manner. Chockfull of short works that make big statements and suit just about any mood, this 29th anniversary edition proves once again that size doesn't matter.
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Admirers of this annual compendium of fiction, poetry, and essays published in small-press venues can rave about its high literary quality, its rich spectrum of voices and subjects, and the importance of noncorporate publishing. But one must also say that it is a whole lot of fun to immerse oneself in these big, buzzing, and roiling volumes: you never know what you are going to find. Here are humor and pathos, danger and revelation. This blockbuster edition includes Andrei Codrescu's address to a meeting of the American Geographer's Association, an arch and evocative poem titled "Geographers at Mardi Gras." An arresting essay by Patricia Monaghan titled "Physics and Grief" is also included, as are such shattering short stories as Yiyun Li's tale about eunuchs and a young man who resembles the great dictator and Tom Bissell's intense drama about an American missionary in Russia. Among 62 winners, rookies stand beside such veterans as Wendell Berry, Mary Gordon, Kay Ryan, and William T. Vollman, constituting a stirring and, by virtue of their creativity and eloquent outspokenness, hopeful gathering. Donna Seaman
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Edition details

• Publisher: Pushcart Press
• Publication date: 2004
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1888889403
• ISBN 13: 9781888889406
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 560