This Is Not Chick Lit: Original Stories by America's Best Women Writers

ISBN-13: 9780812975673 / Angielski / Miękka / 2006 / 336 str.

Elizabeth Merrick

Opis

Chick lit: A genre of fiction that often recycles the following plot: Girl in big city desperately searches for Mr. Right in between dieting and shopping for shoes. Girl gets dumped (sometimes repeatedly). Girl finds Prince Charming.

This Is Not Chick Lit is a celebration of America's most dynamic literary voices, as well as a much needed reminder that, for every stock protagonist with a designer handbag and three boyfriends, there is a woman writer pushing the envelope of literary fiction with imagination, humor, and depth.

The original short stories in this collection touch on some of the same themes as chick lit-the search for love and identity-but they do so with extraordinary power, creativity, and range; they are also political, provocative, and, at turns, utterly surprising. Featuring marquee names as well as burgeoning talents, This Is Not Chick Lit will nourish your heart, and your mind.

Including these original stories:

"The Thing Around Your Neck" by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
"Two Days" by Aimee Bender
"An Open Letter to Doctor X" by Francine Prose
"Gabe" by Holiday Reinhorn
"Documents of Passion Love" by Carolyn Ferrell
"Volunteers Are Shining Stars" by Curtis Sittenfeld
"Selling the General" by Jennifer Egan
"The Seventy-two-Ounce Steak Challenge" by Dika Lam
"Love Machine" by Samantha Hunt
"Ava Bean" by Jennifer S. Davis
"Embrace" by Roxana Robinson
"The Epiphany Branch" by Mary Gordon
"Joan, Jeanne, La Pucelle, Maid of Orleans" by Judy Budnitz
"Gabriella, My Heart" by Cristina Henriquez
"The Red Coat" by Caitlin Macy
"The Matthew Effect" by Binnie Kirshenbaum
"The Recipe" by Lynne Tillman
"Meaning of Ends" by Martha Witt

Praise for This Is Not Chick Lit

"This Is Not Chick Lit is important not only for its content, but for its title. I'll know we're getting somewhere when equally talented male writers feel they have to separate themselves from the endless stream of fiction glorifying war, hunting and sports by naming an anthology This Is Not a Guy Thing."--Gloria Steinem

"These voices, diverse and almost eerily resonant, offer us a refreshing breath of womanhood-untamed, ungroomed, and unglossed."--Elle

Recenzje

These voices, diverse and almost eerily resonant, offer us a refreshing breath of womanhood-untamed, ungroomed, and unglossed. -ELLE

O autorze

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie was born in Nigeria. Her first novel,
Purple Hibiscus, won the Commonwealth Writers Prize and the
Hurston/Wright Legacy Award, was shortlisted for the Orange Prize and
the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize, and longlisted for the Booker. Her short
fiction has won the 2003 O. Henry Prize and has appeared in various literary
publications, including Granta and the Iowa Review. She is a
2005/2006 Hodder Fellow at Princeton University and divides her time
between the United States and Nigeria. Her second novel, Half of a Yellow
Sun, will be published in September 2006.

Aimee Bender is the author of three books, most recently the story collection
Willful Creatures. Her short fiction has been published in
Granta, GQ, Harper s, The Paris Review, Tin House, and other publica-
tions and has been heard on Public Radio International s This American
Life. She lives in Los Angeles.

Judy Budnitz s stories have appeared in The New Yorker, Harper s, Story,
The Paris Review, the Oxford American, Glimmer Train, Fence, and
McSweeney s. She is the recipient of an O. Henry Prize, and her debut
collection, Flying Leap, was a New York Times Notable Book in 1998.
Budnitz is also the author of the novel If I Told You Once, which won the
Edward Lewis Wallant Award, and was shortlisted for the Orange Prize in
Britain. Her most recent book is the collection Nice Big American Baby.
She lives in San Francisco.

Jennifer S. Davis is the author of Her Kind of Want, winner of the
2002 Iowa Award for Short Fiction. Her fiction has appeared in such
magazines as the Oxford American, The Paris Review, Grand Street, and
One Story. Her new collection of short stories, Our Former Lives in Art,
is forthcoming from Random House in spring 2007.

Jennifer Egan is the author of the novels The Invisible Circus and
Look at Me, which was a finalist for the National Book Award in 2001,
and a short-story collection, Emerald City. Her short stories have appeared
in The New Yorker, Harper s, and McSweeney s, among other
publications. Also a journalist, she writes frequently for The New York
Times Magazine. Her new novel, The Keep, will be published in August
2006.

Carolyn Ferrell is the author of the short-story collection Don t
Erase Me, which won the Art Seidenbaum Award for First Fiction, the
John C. Zacharis First Book Award, given by Ploughshares, and the New
Voices Award from Quality Paperback Book Club. Her stories have been
published in several anthologies, including The Best American Short Stories
of the Century, edited by John Updike, and Children of the Night:
The Best Short Stories by Black Writers, 1967 to the Present, edited by
Gloria Naylor. A recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship,
Ferrell teaches at Sarah Lawrence College. She lives in the Bronx
with her husband and two children.

Mary Gordon s novels include Pearl, Spending, The Company of
Women, The Rest of Life, and The Other Side. She is also the author of the
memoir The Shadow Man, among other works of nonfiction. She has received
a Lila Wallace-Reader s Digest Award, a Guggenheim Fellowship,
and the 1997 O. Henry Award for best story. She teaches at Barnard College
and lives in New York City.

Cristina Henríquez is the author of the short-story collection Come
Together, Fall Apart. She is a graduate of the Iowa Writers Workshop,
and her fiction has appeared in The New Yorker, Ploughshares, Glimmer
Train, TriQuarterly, and AGNI. <