About the Author

Joyce Carol Oates is the National Book Award-winning author of over fifty novels, including bestsellers We Were the Mulvaneys, Blonde, and The Gravedigger's Daughter. She is the Roger S. Berlind Distinguished Professor of the Humanities at Princeton University.

Reviews

Praise for the first edition:
"Joyce Carol Oates has cast her net further and deeper, drawing from American literature's impressive past and substantial cultural wealth.... Exceptional."--Booklist
"More than a survey of writing styles. It is a celebration of the diversity of American culture."--Denver Post
"Readers who take an encompassing view of American literature and culture will love this book, which brilliantly captures the range and heft of the remarkable American contribution to the short story genre. With penetrating introductions by Joyce Carol Oates to each writer, this is an anthology of the finest kind, a collection of stories dazzling in variety but unified by an editor of singular intelligence and vision."--Arnold Rampersad, Princeton University
"Joyce Carol Oates, a master fabulist who is also one of our finest critics, has given us a treasury that represents the astonishing range of the American short story. But instead of another showcase of 'greatest hits, ' Oates ventures further afield, to uncover a series of neglected but refulgent gems. This is a collection with guts--and brains. Best of all, it's a collection that unfolds, as its editor promises, the larger story of American writing, in all its hues and timbres."--Henry Louis Gates, Jr., Harvard University
"A splendid volume of short stories which reflect the wealth of brilliance built up over the years by a wide ranging field of American writers. Oates has done an outstanding job in making this selection.... She does not always go for the well known stories by delights us with some that have remained somewhat obscure."--Yorkshire Gazette and Herald
"To a short story lover it is hard to think of a book that could give more pleasure."--Scotland on Sunday