Responding to America's love affair with the short-short, editors Shapard and Thomas consulted nearly two-hundred magazines and chose the sixty stories, written in English or translated, that they considered best. Ranging across countries and cultures, the selection includes a number of new stories from the Pacific Rim Well-known writers--William Maxwell, Margaret Atwood, Don DeLillo, Mark Richard--join lesser-known writers--Molly Giles, Andrew Lam, Judy Troy--who will be (or should be) better known. Each story revels in its own element of surprise; each, whether traditional or experimental,...

Responding to America's love affair with the short-short, editors Robert Shapard and James Thomas searched thousands of books and magazines to select these sixty stories--each under 2,000 words, each with its own element of surprise, whether traditional, experimental, humorous, moving, or magical. In the process they discovered both new talents and a wealth of celebrated writers, such as Jorge Luis Arzola, Aimee Bender, Teolinda Gersao, Romulus Linney, Yann Martel, Sam Shepard, and Tobias Wolff. Zdravka Evitmova conjures blood drops that cure any disease. Ian Frazier writes public relations...

Fiction. Cultural Writing. A collection of stories written in English by writers who emigrated to the United States; each story is accompanied by an introduction by the author. Why have these writers chosen to express themselves in a second language? There are as many reasons as there are writers.

What is a flash fiction called in other countries? In Latin America it is amicro, in Denmark kortprosa, in Bulgaria mikro razkaz. These short shorts, usually no more than 750 words, range from linear narratives to the more unusual: stories based on mathematical forms, a paragraph-length novel, a scientific report on volcanic fireflies that proliferate in nightclubs. Flash has always and everywhere been a form of experiment, of possibility. A new entry in the lauded Flash and Sudden Fiction anthologies, this collection includes 86 of the most beautiful, provocative, and moving narratives by...