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The Best American Short Stories 2014

(The Best American Short Stories)

Jennifer Egan (Goodreads Author),

Heidi Pitlor (Goodreads Author) (Editor),

Amanda Urban (Afterword)

3.78 · Rating details · 1,622 ratings · 191 reviews

“The literary ‘Oscars’ features twenty outstanding examples of the best of the best in American short stories.” — Shelf Awareness for Readers

The Best American Short Stories 2014 will be selected by national best-selling author Jennifer Egan, who won the 2011 Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award for fiction for A Visit from the Goon Squad, heralded by T ...more

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Hardcover, 384 pages

Published October 7th 2014 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (first published January 1st 2014)

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Dec 03, 2014 Glenn Sumi rated it really liked it

Shelves: short-stories

I love reading the annual Best American Short Stories anthologies.

They’re a great way to keep up with current writing, see what your favourite authors are up to and discover new ones who are publishing in little magazines and journals.

Inclusion in the book can be a huge boost to a young or emerging writer’s career. I remember reading an interview with the great Raymond Carver in which he said he was so excited with his first BASS publication in the late 1960s that he took the volume to bed with ...more

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Oct 31, 2014 Bonnie Brody rated it it was ok

This collection of short stories has some very good work in it and some stories that were difficult to get through because they were either boring or poorly written. I am not a great fan of Jennifer Egan's writing and, since she is this year's editor, that may be why the collection did not resonate very well with me.

There is one story included that makes the whole book worthwhile. It is entitled 'Long Tom Lookout' and is by Nicole Cullen, a writer new to my radar. There is a lot going on in this This collection of short stories has some very good work in it and some stories that were difficult to get through because they were either boring or poorly written. I am not a great fan of Jennifer Egan's writing and, since she is this year's editor, that may be why the collection did not resonate very well with me.

There is one story included that makes the whole book worthwhile. It is entitled 'Long Tom Lookout' and is by Nicole Cullen, a writer new to my radar. There is a lot going on in this story. The gist of it is that a woman is looking for her errant husband from whom she is separated. He is not to be found but she steals his pick-up truck and a five year-old child he had with another woman (who is now in jail for drug addiction). The child appears to be autistic. He barely speaks except to repeat words, and is fascinated with maps. She drives from New Orleans to Idaho and there secures a job at a remote site as a fire sighter. The story is about the relationship of the woman and the child, along with her attempts to try and understand herself and him, and come to terms with the dissolution of the marriage. The story's power lies with what is implied but not directly stated. It takes a writer with real chops to create a short story that stays with the reader without fading in its beauty. Ms. Cullen succeeds in doing this.

'Charity', by Charles Baxter, starts off with a bang. It goes from Ethiopia to Minnesota in one page. A relationship quickly dissembles when one of the couple finds himself in such pain that he resorts to addiction in order to deal with his horrific situation. The end of the story disappointed me. I expected a better resolution.

I enjoyed T.C. Boyle's story, 'The Night of the Satellite. The message I got from his writing is that random occurrences can be met with either tragedy or open-ended joy and surprise.

Peter Cameron's 'After the Flood' is one of the stronger stories. A couple is asked by their minister to take in a family whose house is destroyed by a flood. For six days, they take in three strangers and many painful things about their past come to the surface.

I found Craig Davidson's story, 'Medium Tough', one of the strangest ones I've read. A man is born, seemingly of two halves, one strong and one bony and weak; one testosterone loaded and the other needing regular doses of male hormones to survive. He is a pediatric surgeon whose parents were both alcoholic when he was in utero. He deals with the results of his own deformities by doing delicate surgeries on children at most risk.

David Gates's story, 'A Hand Reached Down to Guide Me', is very poignant. A musician and his wife take in a terminally ill friend and let him die in their home.

Though I've been a fan of Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, her story in this collection disappointed me. 'A Judges Will' seemed quite simplistic as it dealt with a woman who finds out that her dying spouse has had a mistress for the past 25 years. What impact will this have on his will?

In 'Mastiff', Joyce Carol Oates does not disappoint. A woman, lonely and self-absorbed, goes hiking with her older lover. She fantasizes about their relationship despite actually feeling very little. Ultimately, she is attacked by a giant mastiff she'd seen at the beginning of their hike and her lover defends her. Should she feel more for him now?

I found some of the stories ridiculous, some trivial, some good, and one brilliant. Perhaps, this is a good outcome for this collection. Triviality abounds, goodness comes infrequently and one is lucky to find brilliance in writing at all. ...more

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Nov 06, 2014 Karl Bunker rated it it was amazing

The Best American Short Stories series uses a different guest editor each year, so there's some significant variation from year to year in the sort of stories that are selected for the volume. This year's guest editor was Jennifer Egan, and by my tastes she did a great job, with excellent stories far outweighing the ones I found lacking.

Below are my mini-reviews of all the stories in the anthology.

In "Charity" by Charles Baxter, a gay man doing volunteer work in Ethiopia returns home with a debi ...more

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Nov 01, 2014 Jen rated it did not like it

Shelves: netgalley, didn-t-finish

My thanks to NetGalley and Houghton Mifflin Harcourt for an eARC of this book to read and review.

If this is the best America can offer, we're doomed. Or I have a shot at becoming the best short story writer this country has seen in a year at the least. So yes, we're pretty much doomed.

I made it about 91 pages into this book when I realized that the running theme of the book this year was "let's-see-if-we-can-make-the-reader/s-attempt-suicide". I am not making light of suicide, it is a very sad a ...more

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Sep 19, 2018 Stef Smulders rated it liked it

Shelves: short-stories

I liked earlier collections of this series and discovered some great new voices, but it is clear that the editors of this volume and I do not share the same taste. There are quite a few stories here that I do not care for at all and there is not a single one that I would call excellent.

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May 25, 2017 Jerry rated it liked it

A solid collection of short stories, most of which either have no resolution or are utterly depressing, or both. Standouts for me were Nell Freudenberger’s Hover, about a mother going through a period of dissociative episodes; Nicole Cullen’s Long Tom Lookout, about a woman stealing her husband’s child into the Idaho mountains and her own past; and Brendan Mathews’s This Is Not a Love Song, about a shooting-star musician and her friend and photographer.

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Jan 13, 2015 Jillwilson rated it liked it

Along with drinking too much, walking on the beach and teetering along the fault lines of family relationships, reading Best American Short Stories (AKA BASS) is my much-loved Christmas tradition. Every year I kid myself that I will do what at least one reviewer does and read only one story each day – like a gorgeous prolonged literary Advent calendar. But every year I dive into this book and eat it up fast.

So, 2014 – edited by Jennifer Egan, whose book (A Visit from the Goon Squad) was a great Along with drinking too much, walking on the beach and teetering along the fault lines of family relationships, reading Best American Short Stories (AKA BASS) is my much-loved Christmas tradition. Every year I kid myself that I will do what at least one reviewer does and read only one story each day – like a gorgeous prolonged literary Advent calendar. But every year I dive into this book and eat it up fast.

So, 2014 – edited by Jennifer Egan, whose book (A Visit from the Goon Squad) was a great fave of mine a couple of years ago. In her introduction, she outlines her criteria for selection – which includes ““If there was a single factor that decided whether a story ended up in my ongoing pile of contenders, it was its basic power to make me lose my bearings, to envelop me in a fictional world.” Other criteria included: freshness and specificity of language, an unpredictable turn in the plot’s movement, and an awareness of layers. “I wanted to see if there was more to the story than was directly being told, and that there were multiple histories in the air without explanation.”

Egan was also looking for some stories which had some “engagement with our moment” – which would be the reason for including two indifferent stories set in contemporary American combat zones.
Most years there will be three or four stand-out stories that just knock me out and propel me to read more of that writers work. Last year (I think) it was Louise Ehrlich and George Saunders amongst others whose work I tracked down. This year, while I will follow up several writers, I have to agree with this reviewer who wrote “All are serviceable, none bad, but few of the stories are true tours de force, with one notable exception being Lauren Groff’s “At the Round Earth’s Imagined Corners,” the key word being the penultimate one, and Laura van den Berg’s odd, pensive “Antarctica” and its utterly memorable closing line—fittingly, and artfully, the last in the collection.” (https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-re...) (The last line of Antartica – for those interested, reads as: “I did not know if one day I would disappear and no one except a missing woman and a dead man would be able to tell the people who loved me why.” It is memorable in the context of this fine story.) Lauren Goff’s story is a lesson to any aspiring writer about how to fit a man’s life into one short story.

I also liked ‘God’, unlike one other reviewer, Charles May, who wrote about it this way:“The first sentence sums up the story: "He called her God because she wrote a poem about how Caleb Newton ejaculated prematurely the night she slept with him, and because she shared the poem with her friends." If you were in a college fraternity, you may appreciate this story. I was not.” (http://may-on-the-short-story.blogspo...) Maybe I am a fratboy at heart. Charles May writes about this anthology every year and is always worth a read as well.

So, am I off BASS forever? No – still enjoyable and a great lead into some quality American writing.
...more

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Oct 22, 2017 LATOYA JOVENA rated it really liked it · review of another edition

For the most part this collection grabbed me from the first story and wouldn't let go. I subtracted a star because one story left me completely baffled. ...more

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Feb 06, 2015 Jack Wolfe rated it really liked it

The reviews suggesting that this particular volume of the "Best American" series is dark and sad and maybe even (gasp!) depressing are onto something. Death and decay factor into nearly every single story here. And this is a GREAT THING, if you ask me. I doubt this thematic consistency was intentional on Egan's part, though it is clear from her introduction that she is a firm believer in fiction's ability to do important things. In 2014, death is still a very, very hard thing to talk about-- in ...more

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Nov 07, 2014 Alan rated it it was amazing

I've read this series long enough to know that the selections are usually going to be very well-written stories by authors performing at their peak form. Often I've followed up by reading a collection of stories by an author with a great story in one of these anthologies but almost every time the one story I encountered in the anthology was far better than the rest in the author's collection. The fun of reading stories like these is that in spite of huge differences in style, characterization, p ...more

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Jan 08, 2015 Tung rated it really liked it

Shelves: short-stories

I read a lot of short story collections. For one reason, short story collections are easier to read in short bursts. It always takes me a second to pick up a novel at some random stopping point and remember where in the narrative I am, whereas short stories are self-contained. For another reason, I think it is a real skill to distill a plot and characters into the confines of a short story. My problem with many short story collections is that they tend to be mixed bags – handfuls of outstanding ...more

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Dec 26, 2015 Jennifer Hicks rated it liked it

Shelves: 2015

My husband has been giving me a copy of this short story anthology for Christmas every year since 1990.(Wow! 25 years of the same gift...we are predictable and faithful to our traditions). It's the book that sits on my bedside table throughout the year. I pick it up and read a story or two when I've just finished a big, meaty novel, but don't feel ready to dive into another. I take it with me on vacations as my "back up read" in case whatever novel I've brought doesn't pan out, and finally I spe ...more

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Dec 14, 2014 Sian Griffiths rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: anthology

This year's Best American Short Stories is a fairly solid collection, but I have to admit, it struck me as a little too monoculture. I would have liked to see a greater assortment of stories from non-white authors. I have to admit, too, that I'm getting a bit weary of New York stories about failed relationships, and there is an example of just such a story here. Even when well written, as this one is, they feel far too familiar. Those critiques aside, several stories here rocked my socks.

My abso ...more

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Nov 03, 2014 Clifford rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: shortstorycollections, anthologies

Without having read the collection, I chose it for a fiction workshop I'm teaching this winter. I regret that choice. We'll still learn from reading these stories and discussing them, but I wish there were more stories I'd want my students to emulate. ...more

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Jan 06, 2015 Geoff rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: fiction

These are not saccharine coated formulaic stories.

A while ago I read a talk by Dr Tim Keller about the search for happiness. He said that there are basically three types of people: the (young &) naive who think that happiness is inevitable, the cynics who think that happiness is impossible and those of us who are too busy running the rat race because we think that happiness is just around the corner. Keller says that the cynics are often our best thinkers, our most successful people. This book l ...more

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Mar 02, 2015 Andy Miller rated it really liked it

A good collection of diverse stories. My favorites include:

"Charity" starts as a narrative of what happened to Quinn the days before he disappeared, his money and health problems are intertwined and lead to a drug dealer and he is afraid of asking his boyfriend in Seattle for help--the story then shifts to a first person account by the boyfriend who tries to find and help Quinn, the shift in narrative gives different perspectives to both characters--and certainly different relationships with Qui A good collection of diverse stories. My favorites include:

"Charity" starts as a narrative of what happened to Quinn the days before he disappeared, his money and health problems are intertwined and lead to a drug dealer and he is afraid of asking his boyfriend in Seattle for help--the story then shifts to a first person account by the boyfriend who tries to find and help Quinn, the shift in narrative gives different perspectives to both characters--and certainly different relationships with Quinn's drug dealer

"After the flood" is told from perspective of a woman who's asked by her minister if she and her retired husband can temporarily take in a family whose home was lost in a flood. The story brings back memories of the tragedy that hit her daughter and grandaughter and shows how she and her husband have dealt with the grief, and with the different religious approaches that sought to comfort them

"Long Tom Lookout" is a story of a woman who unexpectedly finds herself stuck with her husband's autistic son and then decides to flee with him to her Idaho home.By the end of the story the reader wonders if the other characters are as troubled and bad as they appear to be or if the objective clues in the story point to a certain craziness in the author

"A Hand Reached Down to Guide Me" is narrated by a professor over the years with a focus on his friend Paul Thompson, an almost famous bluegrass performer. Thompson appears in his life at key times over the years, his last request is to move into the professor's home at the end of his lost battle with cancer; it is Paul's death that jolts the professor and his second wife into a new life

"This is not a Love Song" is a retrospective of a famous rock singer's life told by a high school friend whose friendship and photographs of the rock star helped start the photographer's career

"Mastiff" recounts a hike of two single people well into adulthood; when one of them is attacked by a mastiff(whose owner flees the park) it puts their lives and relationship into perspective

In "Antartica" a woman goes to Antarctica shortly after her brother, a scientist who was working there is killed in an explosion. During her trip she recounts the time she lived with him and his wife and we learn of the secret of why the wife left as she regrets to herself that she never told her brother the secret

...more

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Oct 14, 2015 Rick Schindler rated it it was amazing

The 20 stories in this collection range from merely very good to outstanding.
The curating hand of editor Jennifer Egan feels tangible to me, both in the gender balance of writers, which is pretty much 50-50, and a skew toward longer, more experimental writing toward the back of the collection.

If the stories have anything in common, it is their distinct settings. Reading the collection end to end, I got a feeling of travelogue, of visiting a broad range of places, times, and subcultures: a lonel ...more

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Jan 07, 2015 Eric Anderson rated it it was amazing

Short stories are like unwanted orphans. Some lucky ones are published in major periodicals or an author’s collection or win a prize. But even great short stories can appear in a literary review and remain largely unread except by a devout following of readers. They languish in the background waiting to be noticed. Thankfully the Best American Short Stories anthology helps to highlight some stellar examples of story telling every year. This year’s anthology holds particularly impressive examples ...more

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Mar 11, 2015 Louise Aronson rated it it was amazing

I read this anthology - or try to - most years. In my house, I have a long, colorful, if not particularly prominent bookshelf devoted to the series. But some years it's tough to get through...
Not this year. Jennifer Egan, rightly acclaimed for her genre jumping, bending and blending literary short fiction and novels, and this year's guest editor, picked a varied and often surprising group of winners. As she says in her introduction: "If there was a single factor that decided whether a story ende ...more

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Jan 04, 2015 Colette rated it it was ok

I was disappointed by this collection. I love a good short story and thought there were few of those in this year's. Yes, the subject matter of many of the stories was depressing but that wasn't what really bothered me - I felt like some of the stories were just poorly written (amateur hour), in which every sentence felt like an overworked struggle, and the others that were well-written were just not engrossing. At all. However, there were a few standout exceptions for me: Long Tom Lookout, Afte ...more

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Jan 15, 2016 Chris - Quarter Press Editor rated it it was amazing

This is one of the best collections of short stories that I've read in awhile.

If you're famililar with my reviews, you know how often I say, "Like any collection, this has its highs and lows." That is definitely my norm. However, with this collection, something "clicked" with each story for me, and perhaps that was due to Egan's wonderful preface, as she sets this collection up as stories that surprised her. I found this to be true for me, as well.

Each story, while familiar in human-ness and str ...more

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Dec 29, 2014 Nate rated it it was ok

Shelves: 2015

Somehow these books always end up as a slog. I thought it might be a bad sign when I couldn't make it through the guest editor's intro (establish a more rigorous short story aesthetic? really?). And the annual hand-wringing over the state of the short story, the precious magazines that publish them, and technology's affect on the artist. Gag me with a spoon! However, there were some goodies. Peter Cameron's After the Flood was emotionally powerful yet had me laughing my ass off. TC Boyle's story ...more

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Oct 23, 2014 Mike Fehrenbacher rated it really liked it

Overall, a very solid collection, with a few stories I loved, several that were really good, some that were nice but forgettable, and only one that really irked me.

Favorites:
The Indian Uprising
After the Flood
Medium Tough
La Pulchra Nota
God

Runners-up:
Charity
The Night of the Satellite
A Hand Reached Down to Guide Me
The Judge's Will
Kattekoppen
Mastiff
Next to Nothing
Antarctica ...more

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Nov 07, 2014 Alyce rated it really liked it

I do enjoy this collection. Thankfully, there were only 5 stories from the New Yorker so it wasn't as redundant as some years. I just love the contributor's notes at the back of the book- learning the author's impetus for the story adds a dimension that truly enhances the reading experience for me.
If you only skim this book, go right to the back and read two particularly wonderful stories, Karen Russell's "Madame Bovary's Greyhound" and Laura Van Den Berg's "Antarctica". ...more

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May 04, 2015 Tim rated it really liked it

I chose this book for my upcoming sessions at St. Johnsbury Academy in both "AP English Literature and Composition" and "Teaching and Practicing the Art of Fiction" (co-taught with my brother Tom).
Although the landscape of American fiction appears to be pretty dark, there is a lot to recommend these stories. We chose these 6 for special attention: After the Flood, Medium Tough, Hover, The Judge’s Will, Evie M., and La Pulchra Nota. The other stories we will use for special projects. ...more

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Dec 14, 2015 Abby rated it really liked it

Shelves: books-read-in-2015

Another strong short story collection. My favorites were "Hover" by Nell Freudenberger and "This Is Not a Love Song" by Brendan Matthews. I also enjoyed "At the Round Earth's Imagined Corners," by Lauren Groff, "Charity" by Charles Baxter, "After the Flood," by Peter Cameron, "Long Tom Lookout," by Nicole Cullen, "The Judge's Will," by Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, "Kattekoppen," by Will Mackin, "God" by Benjamin Nugent, "Mastiff" by Joyce Carol Oates, and "Antarctica" by Laura Van Den Berg. ...more

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Jan 03, 2015 Lada rated it it was ok

Started at the beginning with 'Charity' and was overwhelmed by bad things going worse for the main character. Thought I'd flip to a random page and find something different. 'Long Tom Lookout' was more of the same, main character dealing with an unfair hand dealt to her with no light in sight. Was not brave enough to try a 3rd. ...more

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Sep 28, 2017 Fungus Gnat rated it liked it

Wanting to read some more short stories, I picked up this entry in the annual “Best American” series, chosen mainly because I trusted the sensibilities of the volume editor, Jennifer Egan, on the basis of having read her Visit from the Goon Squad. This book contains 20 stories running from roughly 3 to 10 K words each. It includes a foreword from the series editor, an intro from the volume editor, a list of about a hundred “other distinguished stories” from the year, and a bio note on each autho Wanting to read some more short stories, I picked up this entry in the annual “Best American” series, chosen mainly because I trusted the sensibilities of the volume editor, Jennifer Egan, on the basis of having read her Visit from the Goon Squad. This book contains 20 stories running from roughly 3 to 10 K words each. It includes a foreword from the series editor, an intro from the volume editor, a list of about a hundred “other distinguished stories” from the year, and a bio note on each author as well as an author’s note on each story (the latter are sometimes helpful, often not). For the DIY crowd, there is also a long list of magazines publishing stories.

There’s little to be said about the content of such a varied set of stories except that it is varied. They may be consistently downbeat, as some claim, but I did not notice that while reading them. I was more annoyed by a tendency toward elusive plot resolutions. Nonetheless, I found value in almost all the entries, some more than others, of course. To give an idea of the story lines and what I got out of the work, I include my notes on seven of the stories.

Ann Beattie, “The Indian Uprising.” Maude, the narrator, is talking with an older friend of hers, a professor of poetry perhaps, now around 70. Maude is a former student, and the conversation is easy and teasing. She agrees to dinner with him, and they soon get together at a Mexican place where there will be a chance meeting and a fright for her. I enjoyed this story—the dialogue is attractive and rings true, and Beattie has a good sense of humor. I’m not sure what the greater purpose is. There is something about the long-lasting nature of love and friendship, something about what motivates stories and poems. It all has the intimate, documentary feel of memoir.

Nell Freudenberger, “Hover.” Shortly after she and her husband break up, our narrator discovers that she can hover, or levitate. This magical response to near-sublime conditions may be by way of compensation for losing a husband. Perhaps the same forces are triggering fears of death in her pre-school-age son. More likely, his anticipations of doom are reactions to the class bully’s singling him out for class bully treatment. Freudenberger’s story seems simple and funny—something of a kick, without trivializing its themes.

Lauren Groff, “At the Round Earth’s Imagined Corners.” A story that encapsulates much of a life—in this case, some 50 years—in 20 pages. Here, Jude is a boy with a rough bastard of a father and a timid mother. He draws emotional sustenance from his mother, there being no other source—except math; he develops a fascination for numbers. They (the “imagined corners”) support him while he learns to accept what he needs from life (the “round earth”) and rejects what he doesn’t need, till he has “escaped the hungry darkness, once more.”

Brendan Mathews, “This is Not a Love Story.” Our first-person narrator, a budding photographer, tells of her close friendship with a young rock singer whose career is taking off but who faces serious challenges--emotional and physical—that go beyond the usual neuroses of the creative. Not the least of these challenges is the friendship at the heart of the story. Our unreliable narrator seems more interested in the singer as a photographic subject than as a friend. She even formats her story in the form of a photographic album. But despite the formal invention, this story proceeds along more traditional affective lines than most of the other tales in this volume.

Benjamin Nugent, “God.” The narrator, a fraternity member, recalls the relationship his “brothers” had with Melanie, whom they called “God” because of a sexual power that I won’t belabor. Everybody is hot after God, but the narrator has other irons in the fire, as suggested by his entry in a litany to one of his frat brothers: “If a man kisses Newton, he’ll turn into a beautiful woman.” The story is a fascinating examination of sexual ambivalence and the consequences when the news leaks beyond the first or second degree of separation.

Karen Russell, “Madame Bovary’s Greyhound.” Djali revels in her love for her master, who manifests herself in an explosive panoply of indoor and outdoor fragrances. But this love cannot last, as Djali senses the psychic and physical toll Emma’s failing marriage is taking on her and begins a sympathetic decline of her own. Russell’s story is an imaginative and utterly convincing biography of an animal on the verge of consciousness. In choosing a famed literary character as her canine subject’s master, she can exploit our familiarity with Emma to keep the focus on Djali.

Laura van den Berg, “Antarctica.” Our narrator is visiting the icy continent to learn more about an explosion that killed her brother, a seismologist. She and he were very close, she assures the scientists who knew him, This was once true—when she and he had lived together with his wife Eve. The two women also grew close, enough so that Eve entrusted the narrator with a secret. This secret is emblematic of lapses of communications and understanding that occur even between the most intimate of family members and friends, This story follows such losses—and the lost—against the backdrop of an empty continent.
...more

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Dec 09, 2017 Corey rated it really liked it

Shelves: short-stories

Great collection overall. There were a few baffling choices that I simply don't think belong here--Ferris' "The Breeze," Jhabvala's "The Judge's Will," Molly McNett's "La Pulchra Nota"--but I suppose that's the case with any of these anthologies. My favorites alone, though (Benjamin Nugent's "God," Beattie's "The Indian Uprising" Nicole Cullen's "Long Tom Lookout") make the book worth reading. ...more

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Feb 14, 2015 Matthew rated it it was amazing

A great installment in the series this year (and I've read almost every volume since 1997, when it was assigned reading in my undergrad creative writing class). I especially liked the stories by T.C. Boyle, Nicole Cullen, Molly McNett, and Laura Van Den Berg. ...more

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About Jennifer Egan

Jennifer Egan

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Jennifer Egan’s 2017 novel, Manhattan Beach, has been awarded the 2018 Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction. Egan was born in Chicago and raised in San Francisco. She is also the author of The Invisible Circus, a novel which became a feature film starring Cameron Diaz in 2001, Look at Me, a finalist for the National Book Award in fiction in 2001, Emerald City and Other Stories, The Keep ...more

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Quotes from The Best American...

“A dog’s love is forever. We expect infidelity from one another; we marvel at this one’s ability to hold that one’s interest for fifty, sixty years; perhaps some of us feel a secret contempt for monogamy even as we extol it, wishing parole for its weary participants. But dogs do not receive our sympathy or our suspicion—from dogs we presume an eternal adoration.” — 2 likes

“Don’t get me wrong—I enjoy my real life, but I feel about it much the way I do about New York City, my chosen and adored home: I’m always happy to leave, and I’m always happy to come back.” — 1 likes

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