PEN/O. Henry Prize Stories 2009

Featuring stories selected from thousands published in literary magazines,The PEN/O. Henry Prize Stories 2009is studded with great writers such as Junot Diaz, Nadine Gordimer, Ha Jin, and Paul Theroux, as well as new voices. The winning stories feature locales as diverse as post-war Vietnam, a retirement community in Cape Town, South Africa, an Egyptian desert village, and a permanently darkened New York City; the dizzying range of characters include a Russian mail-order bride in Finland, a rebellious Dominican girl in New Jersey, and a hallucinating British Gulf War veteran. The stories are accompanied by essays from the eminent jurors on their favorites, observations from the twenty winners on what inspired them, and an extensive resource list of magazines.

Laura Furman's work has appeared in The New Yorker, Vanity Fair, Ploughshares, The Yale Review, and other magazines. She is the founding editor of the highly regarded American Short Fiction (three-time finalist for the American Magazine Award). A professor of English at the University of Texas at Austin, she teaches in the graduate James A. Michener Center for writers. She lives in Austin.

Introduction • Laura Furman, Series Editor

•Graham Joyce,“An Ordinary Soldier of the Queen”
•Kristen Sundberg Lunstrum, “The Nursery”
•E. V. Slate, “Purple Bamboo Park”
•John Burnside, “The Bell Ringer”
•Mohan Sikka, “Uncle Musto Takes a Mistress”
•L. E. Miller, “Kind”
•Alistair Morgan, “Icebergs”
•Roger Nash, “The Camera and the Cobra”
•Manuel Muñoz, “Tell Him about Brother John”
•Caitlin Horrocks,“This Is Not Your City”
•Ha Jin,“The House behind a Weeping Cherry”
•Paul Theroux, “Twenty-two Stories”
•Judy Troy,“The Order of Things”
•Nadine Gordimer, “A Beneficiary”
•Viet Dinh, “Substitutes”
•Karen Brown, “Isabel’s Daughter”
•Marisa Silver,“The Visitor”
•Paul Yoon, “And We Will Be Here”
•Andrew Sean Greer, “Darkness”
•Junot Díaz, “Wildwood”

Reading The PEN/O. Henry Prize Stories 2009
The Jurors on Their Favorites
A. S. Byatt on “An Ordinary Soldier of the Queen” by Graham Joyce
Anthony Doerr on “Wildwood” by Junot Díaz
Tim O’Brien on “An Ordinary Soldier of the Queen” by Graham Joyce

Writing The PEN/O. Henry Prize Stories 2009
The Writers on Their Work

Recommended Stories 2009
Publications Submitted
Permissions