Granta 8: Dirty Realism

by Bill Buford (Editor)

The issue of Granta that defined a new school of American writers: Richard Ford, Jayne Anne Phillips, Raymond Carver, Elizabeth Tallent, Tobias Wolff, Bobbie Ann Mason, Frederic Barthelme, Carolyn Forché and others.

Genres: Fiction

252 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1983

About the author

William Holmes Buford is an American author and journalist. He is the author of the books Among the Thugs and Heat: An Amateur's Adventures as Kitchen Slave, Line Cook, Pasta-Maker, and Apprentice to a Dante-Quoting Butcher in Tuscany. Buford was previously the fiction editor for The New Yorker, where he is still on staff. For sixteen years, he was the editor of Granta, which he relaunched in 1979. He is also credited with coining the term "dirty realism".

Reviews

[James Roseman]

A fairly balanced look at some of the leading Dirty Realism writers of the time. I particularly enjoyed the stories by Carver (of course) and Ford, and am excited to read more of their work.

[Chazzbot]

This volume, from 1983, and edited by Bill Buford, features the first story publications by several American authors. There is great work here from Jayne Anne Phillips, Elizabeth Tallent, Frederick Barthelme, Bobbie Ann Mason, Tobias Wolff, and a disturbing explication of the poem, "The Colonel," by Carolyn Forche. A great literary journal at the peak of its game.