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Pushcart Prize XXXIV: Best of the Small Presses

The most honored literary series in America marks its 34th year of continuous publication. Reviewing the 2008 edition of The Pushcart Prize, Publishers Weekly called it “a must-have for contemporary literature lovers” (starred review). The Chicago Tribune has raved, “When it comes to contemporary American literature, the small press is where the action is ... of all anthologies, Pushcart’s is the most rewarding to read straight through.”

In The Pushcart Prize XXXIV more than sixty selections of short stories, essays, and poetry have been picked from thousands of nominations by Pushcart Press staff, contributing editors, and hundreds of small presses. This year Rosanna Warren and Wesley McNair serve as poetry editors. The result is an introduction to a literary world that few readers have access to, where much of today’s important new writing is published, far from the commercial influence of the conglomerates.

The Pushcart Prize has been chosen for the Ivan Sandrof Lifetime Achievement recognition by the National Book Critics Circle and for numerous other awards.

From Publishers' Weekly: "This year's Pushcart anthology offers consistently good prose and poetry that covers a broad range of styles and topics. On the historical front, 'Tied to History' by Greil Marcus and 'A Poetics of Hiroshima' by William Heyen are among several pieces that reinvigorate well-plowed terrain from WWII, while 'Return to Hayneville' by Gregory Orr offers a shocking true tale of police rounding up, imprisoning and battering peaceful protestors in the segregated South. Contemporary standout pieces from J.C. Hallman ('Ethan: A Love Story') and Charles McLeod ('Edge Boys') mine the rich veins of, respectively, video games and suburban teenage prostitution. But not all of the pieces work: two of the unsuccessful stories in this volume — Mary Gaitskill's 'The Arms and Legs of the Lake' and Brock Clarke's 'Our Pointy Boots' — are failed efforts to interrogate the realities of troops returning from the second Iraq War. The anthology is at its most innovative with its poetry, which surpasses the prose in experiments with language and form." Publishers Weekly (Copyright Reed Business Information, Inc.)

  • Format
  • paperback
  • Pages
  • 600
  • Language
  • english
  • ISBN
  • 9781888889543
  • Genres
  • anthologies
  • Release date
  • 2009