Saïd Sayrafiezadeh - New American Stories

ZADIE SMITH was born in north-west London in 1975. Her first novel, White Teeth, was the winner of the Whitbread Award for First Novel, the Guardian First Book Award, the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for Fiction, and the Commonwealth Writers’ First Book Award. Her second novel, The Autograph Man, won the Jewish Quarterly — Wingate Literary Prize. Zadie Smith’s third novel, On Beauty, was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize and won the Commonwealth Writers’ Best Book Award (Eurasian Section) and the Orange Prize for fiction. Her most recent novel, NW, was published in 2012 and has been shortlisted for the Royal Society of Literature Ondaatje Prize and the Women’s Prize for Fiction.

MATHIAS SVALINA is the author of five books, including Destruction Myth, Wastoid, and a collaborative book with the photographer Jon Pack, The Depression. He lives in Denver, Colorado, where he has taught at universities and in DIY spaces and prisons. He is an editor for the independent poetry press Octopus Books and runs a Dream Delivery Service.

WELLS TOWER is the author of Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned, a collection of short fiction. Tower was the recipient of the Paris Review ’s Plimpton Prize for Fiction, the New York Public Library’s Young Lions Fiction Award, a National Magazine Award for fiction, and was included in the New Yorker ’s list of twenty promising writers under forty. Tower’s writing has appeared in The New Yorker, Harper’s, GQ, McSweeney’s, The Paris Review, The Best American Short Stories, and elsewhere.

DEB OLIN UNFERTH is the author of the memoir Revolution, finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award; the story collection Minor Robberies ; and the novel Vacation, winner of the Cabell First Novelist Award. Her work appears in Harper’s, The New York Times, McSweeney’s, and NOON . She has received three Pushcart Prizes and grants from the Creative Capital Foundation. She is an associate professor at the University of Texas at Austin. Her next collection is forthcoming from Graywolf Press.

CLAIRE VAYE WATKINS is the author of Battleborn, winner of the Story Prize, the Rosenthal Family Foundation Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and a Silver Pen Award from the Nevada Writers Hall of Fame. Her stories and essays have appeared in Granta, One Story, The Paris Review, Ploughshares, Glimmer Train, Best of the West 2011, Best of the Southwest 2013, and elsewhere. A graduate of the University of Nevada, Reno and the Ohio State University, Claire teaches at Bucknell University. Her first novel, Gold, Fame, Citrus, is forthcoming from Riverhead Books.

JOY WILLIAMS’s most recent book is The Visiting Privilege: New and Collected Stories. She is the author of four novels — the most recent, The Quick and the Dead, was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in 2001—and three earlier collections of stories, as well as Ill Nature, a book of essays that was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award for criticism. Among her many honors are the Rea Award for the Short Story and the Strauss Living Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. She was elected to the Academy in 2006.

CHARLES YU is the author of How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe, which was a New York Times Notable Book and named one of the best books of the year by Time magazine, as well as the story collections Third Class Superhero, for which he was named one of the National Book Foundation’s 5 Under 35, and his most recent collection, Sorry Please Thank You. He lives in southern California with his family.

Grateful acknowledgment is made to the following for permission to reprint previously published material:

Donald Antrim: “Another Manhattan” from The Emerald Light in the Air by Donald Antrim, copyright © 2014 by Donald Antrim. Reprinted by permission of Farrar, Straus and Giroux, LLC.

Jesse Ball: “The Early Deaths of Lubeck, Brennan, Harp, and Carr” by Jesse Ball. Reprinted by permission of Jesse Ball.

NoViolet Bulawayo: “Shhh” from We Need New Names by NoViolet Bulawayo, copyright © 2013 by NoViolet Bulawayo. Reprinted by permission of Little, Brown and Company.

Kyle Coma-Thompson: “The Lucky Body” from The Lucky Body by Kyle Coma-Thompson (Dock Street Press, 2013). Reprinted by permission of Dock Street Press.

Robert Coover: “Going for a Beer” by Robert Coover, copyright © 2011 by Robert Coover (originally published in The New Yorker, March 2011). Reprinted by permission of Robert Coover.

Lucy Corin: “Madmen” by Lucy Corin. Reprinted by permission of Lucy Corin.

Rebecca Curtis: “The Toast” by Rebecca Curtis, copyright © 2014 by Rebecca Curtis (originally published by Harper’s Magazine, March 2014). Reprinted by permission of The Wylie Agency LLC.

Lydia Davis: “Men” from Can’t and Won’t by Lydia Davis, copyright © 2014 by Lydia Davis. Reprinted by permission of Farrar, Straus and Giroux, LLC.

Don DeLillo: “Hammer and Sickle” from The Angel Esmeralda: Nine Stories by Don DeLillo, copyright © 2011 by Don DeLillo. All rights reserved. Reprinted by permission of Scribner Publishing Group, a division of Simon and Schuster, Inc.

Anthony Doerr: “The Deep” by Anthony Doerr. Reprinted by permission of Amelia Atlas, agent on behalf of Anthony Doerr.

Deborah Eisenberg: “Some Other, Better Otto” from Twilight of the Superheroes by Deborah Eisenberg, copyright © 2006 by Deborah Eisenberg. Reprinted by permission of Farrar, Straus and Giroux, LLC.

Mary Gaitskill: “The Arms and Legs of the Lake” from Don’t Cry: Stories by Mary Gaitskill, copyright © 2009 by Mary Gaitskill. All rights reserved. Reprinted by permission of Pantheon Books, an imprint of the Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House LLC.

Rivka Galchen: “The Lost Order” from American Innovations by Rivka Galchen, copyright © 2014 by Rivka Galchen. Reprinted by permission of Farrar, Straus and Giroux, LLC.

Rachel B. Glaser: “Pee on Water” by Rachel B. Glaser. Reprinted by permission of Publishing Genius.

Denis Johnson: “The Largesse of the Sea Maiden” by Denis Johnson, copyright © 2014 by Denis Johnson. (Originally published in The New Yorker, March 2014.) Reprinted by permission of Nicole Aragi, agent on behalf of Denis Johnson.

Rebecca Lee: “Slatland” from Bobcat and Other Stories by Rebecca Lee, copyright © 2013 by Rebecca Lee. All rights reserved. Reprinted by permission of Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill.

Yiyun Li: “A Man Like Him” from Gold Boy, Emerald Girl: Stories by Yiyun Li, copyright © 2010 by Yiyun Li. All rights reserved. Reprinted by permission of Random House, an imprint and division of Penguin Random House LLC.

Tao Lin: “Love Is a Thing on Sale for More Money than There Exists” from Bed by Tao Lin, copyright © 2007. Reprinted by permission of Melville House Publishing, LLC.

Kelly Link: “Valley of the Girls” by Kelly Link, copyright © 2011 by Kelly Link (originally published in Subterranean Online, Summer 2011 and reprinted in Get in Trouble by Kelly Link, February 2015). Reprinted by permission of Renee Zuckerbrot, agent on behalf of Kelly Link.

Sam Lipsyte: “This Appointment Occurs in the Past” from The Fun Parts by Sam Lipsyte, copyright © 2013 by Sam Lipsyte. Reprinted by permission of Farrar, Straus and Giroux, LLC.