New Stories from the South 2002 The Year's Best

by Brown, Larry; Ravenel, Shannon

• ISBN13: 9781565123755
• ISBN10: 1565123751
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2002-08-19
• Publisher: Algonquin Books

Summary

As Larry Brown explains in this year's preface, This is all that I have, this land called North Mississippi, home of my father, and grand-fathers, and great-grandfathers, and luckily for me, it turns out to be always enough. It's that land and everything around it-the intractable clay soil, the twisting rivers, the air heavy with humidity-that makes the South a character in its own right, and that permeates this year's collection. The stories in the seventeenth volume of New Stories from the South begin with the land or the water or the weather, but it's their depth and richness that take us somewhere altogether new-the South, seen from a wholly new perspective, as if for the first time. From the mountains of Tennessee to the suburbs of New Orleans to a hollowed-out antebellum house to the center of Texas, this year's New Stories from the South turns out to be always enough. Nineteen writers make their mark in this year's volume: Dwight Allen, Russell Banks, Brad Barkley, Doris Betts, William Gay, Aaron Gwyn, Ingrid Hill, David Koon, Andrea Lee, Romulus Linney, Corey Mesler, Lucia Nevai, Julie Orringer, Dulane Upshaw Ponder, Bill Roorbach, George Singleton, Kate Small, R. T. Smith, and Max Steele. Each story is followed by the author's notes about its origin. Readers will also find an updated list of the magazines consulted by Ravenel and a complete list of all the stories selected each year since the series' inception in 1986.

Author Biography

Shannon Ravenel, a native of Charleston, South Carolina, was series editor of The Best American Short Stories for thirteen years. She inaugurated the New Stories from the South series in 1986. She serves as Director of Shannon Ravenel Books, an Algonquin imprint, and lives in Chapel Hill, North Carolina

Table of Contents

Preface: Home of My Father, and Grandfathers, and Great-Grandfathers	vii
Larry Brown
Tennessee	1	(27)
Romulus Linney
from The Southern Review
End of the Steam Age	28	(27)
Dwight Allen
from The Greensboro Review
Charting the Territories of the Red	55	(18)
William Gay
from The Southern Review
The Unripe Heart	73	(8)
Max Steele
from The Washington Post Magazine
Of Falling	81	(14)
Aaron Gwyn
from Louisiana Literature
The Rat Spoon	95	(15)
Dulane Upshaw Ponder
from The South Carolina Review
Anthropology	110	(14)
Andrea Lee
from The Oxford American
Aboveground	124	(22)
Doris Betts
from Epoch
I Have Lost My Right	146	(12)
R. T. Smith
from The Missouri Review
Beneath the Deep, Slow Motion	158	(25)
Brad Barkley
from The Virginia Quarterly Review
The More they Stay the Same	183	(5)
Ingrid Hill
from The Raleigh News & Observer
Maximum Sunlight	188	(13)
Kate Small
from Nimrod International
Show-and-Tell	201	(15)
George Singleton
from The Atlantic Monthly
Pilgrims	216	(19)
Julie Orringer
From Ploughshares
Big Bend	235	(17)
Bill Roorbach
from The Atlantic Monthly
The Outer Banks	252	(5)
Russell Banks
from Esquire
The Growth and Death of Buddy Gardner	257	(12)
Corey Mesler
from Pindeldyboz
The Bone Divers	269	(19)
David Koon
from Glimmer Train Stories
Faith Healer	288	(19)
Lucia Nevai
from The Iowa Review
Appendix	307	(10)
Previous Volumes	317