The Columbia Companion to the Twentieth-Century American Short Story

Esteemed critic Blanche Gelfant's brilliant companion gathers together lucid essays on major writers and themes by some of the best literary critics in the United States. Part 1 is comprised of articles on stories that share a particular theme, such as "Working Class Stories" or "Gay and Lesbian Stories." The heart of the book, however, lies in Part 2, which contains more than one hundred pieces on individual writers and their work, including Fitzgerald, Hemingway, Richard Ford, Raymond Carver, Eudora Welty, Andre Debus, Zora Neal Hurston, Anne Beattie, Bharati Mukherjee, J. D. Salinger, and Jamaica Kincaid, as well as engaging pieces on the promising new writers to come on the scene.

Blanche H. Gelfant: For many years she was the Robert E. Maxwell Professor in the Arts and Sciences at Dartmouth. In recognition of her contributions as critic and scholar, the American Literature Division of the Modern Language Association has honored professor Gelfant with the Jay B. Hubbell Award for Lifetime Achievement in American Literary Studies