• THIS WEEK'S STORY I Am an Executioner: Love Stories Rajesh Parameswaran Alfred A. Knopf “Demons” “Demons” is from Rajesh Parameswaran’s debut story collection, I Am an Executioner: Love Stories, (Knopf, 2012).  Parameswaran’s stories have appeared in McSweeney’s, Granta, Zoetrope, and Fiction.  His work has appeared in The Best American Magazine Writing.  He lives in New York City.   The story is about a harassed wife who, having idly wished her annoying husband ...Read More

• A Day in the Life of a Smiling Woman Margaret Drabble Houghton Mifflin Harcourt “The Merry Widow” “The Merry Widow” is from Margaret Drabble’s A Day in the Life of a Smiling Woman, her volume of collected stories (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2011).  Drabble is best known as a novelist and this collection gathers the stories that she published 1966-2011, fourteen in all.  The stories dwell on themes familiar in her novels – ...Read More

• After the Apocalypse: Stories Maureen McHugh Small Beer Press “After the Apocalypse” “After the Apocalypse” is from Maureen McHugh’s story collection, After the Apocalypse: Stories (Small Beer Press, 2011).  McHugh is the author of a Story Prize finalist collection, Mothers & Other Monsters, and four novels, including Tiptree Award-winner China Mountain Zhang and New York Times editor’s choice Nekropolis.  McHugh has also worked on alternate reality games for Halo 2, The Watchmen, and Nine ...Read More

• Crimes in Southern Indiana: Stories Frank Bill Farrar Straus and Giroux “Cold, Hard Love” “Cold, Hard Love” is from Frank Bill’s debut collection, Crimes in Southern Indiana (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2011).  His work has appeared in Granta and Oxford American.  His gritty, high tension writing has been compared to the work of Cormac McCarthy.  Bill lives and writes in Southern Indiana.   Bill had this to say about ...Read More

• Birds of a Lesser Paradise Megan Mayhew Bergman Scribner “The Cow That Milked Herself” “The Cow That Milked Herself” is from Megan Mayhew Bergman’s debut collection, Birds of a Lesser Paradise (Scribner, 2012)  Her work has twice been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and has appeared in the New York Times, Best American Short Stories 2011, New Stories from the South 2010,  Narrative, Ploughshares, One Story, and elsewhere.  She lives ...Read More

• Monstress Lysley Tenorio HarperCollins “The Brothers” “The Brothers” is from Lysley Tenorio’s debut collection, Monstress (HarperCollins, 2012). His stories have appeared in The Atlantic, Zoetrope: All-Story, Ploughshares, Manoa, and The Best New American Voices and Pushcart Prize anthologies.  He was a Stegner Fellow at Stanford University and he is a recipient of a Whiting Writer’s Award and the Nelson Algren Award for Short Fiction.  He was born in the ...Read More

• Perfecting Kathryn Kuitenbrouwer Goose Lane “Will You Staunch the Wound?” Kathryn Kuitenbrouwer’s story, “Will You Staunch the Wound?” is the winner of The Sidney, Storyville’s prize for the best unpublished American or Canadian short story.   Contest judge Richard Nash said this about the story:  “A mark of Kuitenbrouwer’s empathic imagination is her ability to imagine without fuss both the minds and circumstances of other ...Read More

• God Bless America: Stories Steve Almond Lookout Press “The Darkness Together” “The Darkness Together” is from Steve Almond’s collection, God Bless America (Lookout Press, 2011), a finalist for The Story Prize.   Almond is the author of three story collections, the novel Which Brings Me to You (with Julianna Baggott), and two nonfiction books. His stories have appeared in Playboy, Zoetrope, Ploughshares, Ecotone, and other magazines, and ...Read More

Top 10 Lists

Chad Post is the director of Open Letter Books, a press dedicated to publishing contemporary literature from around the world. His is also the managing editor of Three Percent and his articles and book reviews have appeared in a range of publications including The Believer, Publishing Perspectives, and the Wall Street Journal culture blog. "This is my best shot," he said.

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