Prize stories 1990 [rare books]

Prize Stories 1990, marks the seventieth anniversary of the O. Henry Awards, the ongoing, indispensable series that each year brings together outstanding work in contemporary American short fiction. Poised on the threshold of the 1990s, this newest collection, a notable achievement in itself, promises much for the decade ahead.

William Abrahams, editor of the series for twenty-four consecutive years, has selected twenty stories, remarkable in their variety and quality, fifteen of them from the "little" magazines. Several well-known writers are included here-among them Joyce Carol Oates, Peter Matthiessen, and Joanne Greenberg; and there are also writers in early stages of their careers three, Marilyn Sides, Bruce Fleming, and Devon Jersild, are represented by their first-published stories. Taken together, as Abrahams observes in his Introduction, "they show among them a richness of language, a yielding to the seductive powers of the imagination, and a willingness to explore and reinvigorate traditional forms and styles that would not have been anticipated as recently as the day before yesterday."

The value of the collection is enhanced by a special section devoted to biographies and comments about their work by the authors themselves.