Thursday’s Post-Publication Post: FWR’s Short Story Month Collection Giveaway Project

UPDATE: Congratulations to Frume Sarah (Commenter #5 below) and Becky Wolsk (Commenter #6). You are collection giveaway winners! I will email each of you with more information shortly. Thanks to everyone for participating.

Those of you who have been following this blog for awhile may recall two salient facts. First, around this time last year, I offered a special giveaway: two short-story collections (by Susan Perabo and Margot Singer), in conjunction with the Collection Giveaway Project, an initiative coordinated by Fiction Writers Review (FWR) in celebration of Short Story Month (May). And second, I’m now a contributing editor for FWR, and it’s in that capacity that I am once again promoting the CGP as well as participating in it.

First, the promotion part: You can find details about the 2011 CGP on the FWR site, and I very much hope that plenty of you will choose to take part on your own blogs.

Second, the participation part: This May, I will once again award two short-story collections, one each to lucky commenters who shall be selected at random. This year, the collections I’m spotlighting are Midge Raymond’s newly reissued Forgetting English and my very own Quiet Americans.

I have been a fan of Midge Raymond’s work for years. In fact, I reviewed the first edition of Forgetting English for FWR back when the collection was published by Eastern Washington University Press as winner of the Spokane Prize. In its 2011 incarnation, hot off the presses this spring, the book includes two new stories. You can read an excerpt here. (By the way, Midge is also an instructive and engaging blogger, especially on writing-related topics, and definitely worth following on Twitter, too. First, though, make sure you read the guest post she shared with us right here on Practicing Writing last week as part of her virtual book tour.)

At this point, I don’t think you need much more introductory material about my story collection, Quiet Americans. After all, you’ve been reading pre-publication and post-publication posts for months. But I am very happy to have an occasion to offer another giveaway of my book. Now that Quiet Americans is available for Kindle, I’ll be able to award either a paperback OR e-copy, so please keep that in mind should you emerge as a giveaway winner. (For now, it seems that only the previous edition of Forgetting English is available for Kindle, so the choice there will be between the new edition in paperback and the older one for e-reading.)

All you have to do is leave a comment on this post, telling me about one collection you’ve read since last year’s giveaway. Title, author, press, and a line or two about what’s most memorable about it for you. The Collection Giveaway Project and Short Story Month more broadly are intended to celebrate short stories and the people who read and write them. So let’s get a big discussion (and reading list) going.

Comment anytime up to 12:01 a.m. (U.S. Eastern time) on Tuesday, May 31, 2011. At some point that day, I’ll turn to the trusty random number generator to select and announce our two winners. Please remember that I do have a day job, so I may not get to make the announcement until evening. Thanks for your patience—and for your participation!

12 thoughts on “Thursday’s Post-Publication Post: FWR’s Short Story Month Collection Giveaway Project

  1. Tommy says:

    Music Through the Floor by Eric Puchner. Published by Scribner in 2005. Realist fiction with a punch of the off-beat particular. Stories that take their time in creating vivid and lasting worlds.

  2. Phil Hansen says:

    DANCING ON THE EDGE OF THE WORLD by Elizabeth Baines. Published by Salt. Gripping, elliptical and disturbing.

  3. Nina says:

    Hi! I’m a fellow lover of short stories. In the past six months I’ve read: YOUR excellent collection QUIET AMERICAN, Robin Black’s IF I LOVED YOU I WOULD TELL YOU THIS, and Danielle Evans’ BEFORE YOU SUFFOCATE YOUR OWN FOOL SELF. I’m probably missing one. OH! John Jodzio’s IF YOU LIVED HERE and Jonathan Papernick’s THERE IS NO OTHER.

    Wow–I did well. 😉

  4. Ellen C says:

    The Complete Short Stories of Bernard Malamud, ed.by Robert Giroux.

  5. Frume Sarah says:

    Nocturnes: Five Stories of Music and Nightfall by Kazuo Ishiquro. Recommended by the nice folks at Bas Bleu, and published by Vintage, this collection effortlessly blends musical and literary forms of storytelling.

  6. Becky Wolsk says:

    Just read Emma Straub’s OTHER PEOPLE WE MARRIED as my Short Story Month Giveaway book (I’ll publish my blog post on it sometime this week). Straub’s collection reminds me of Jean Thompson’s THROW LIKE A GIRL and Straub’s cynicism reminds me of Dorothy Parker’s voice.

  7. Crystal says:

    I recently read Danielle Evans’ Before You Suffocate Your Own Fool Self and Nic Brown’s Floodmarkers. Loved both–Brown’s stories were all inter-related and really refreshing, but Evans’ collection is one of the best books I’ve read in a long time. Every story was perfect and memorable.

  8. Tony says:

    Great contest! Thanks for spreading these great books around!

  9. I’m probably too late, but just in case I’m not…

    I recently read and very much enjoyed The Civilized World: A Novel in Stories by Susi Wyss, and Ava Homa’s Echoes from the Other Land, both of which opened windows to other cultures. (Ghana/Ivory Coast and Iran, respectively.)

    1. Erika Dreifus says:

      Thanks for sharing, Suzanne, but yes, the giveaway has closed! So sorry!

Comments are closed.