40 Short Stories: A Portable Anthology

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Product Overview

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Diverse classic and contemporary fiction, at an affordable price

40 Short Stories, part of the highly successful Bedford/St. Martins portable series of anthologies and guides, continues to offer a diverse selection of classic and contemporary short fiction for a low price. The stories are arranged chronologically to help students trace the evolution of the short story genre, while editorial features — such as instruction on how to write about fiction, a new student essay, and a glossary of literary terms — are located in the back of the book so the focus can remain on the stories. New additions to the sixth edition include celebrated contemporary writers George Saunders, ZZ Packer, Ted Chiang, and Neel Patel.

This books small size, low price, and versatility make it the perfect anthology for a variety of courses, including introduction to fiction, creative writing, introduction to literature, or literature-based composition.

Package the 40 Short Stories e-book or paperbound edition with Achieve for Writer’s Help, which puts student writing at the center of your course and keeps revision at the core, with a dedicated composition space that guides students through draft, review, source check, and revision steps.

Related Titles

40 Short Stories: A Portable Anthology

Beverly Lawn; Joanne Diaz

Content Material

Authors

Beverly Lawn

Beverly Lawn is Professor of English Emerita and taught undergraduate and graduate fiction and poetry courses for over three decades. She is editor or coeditor of several literature anthologies, including 40 Short Stories: A Portable Anthology and is also the author of Throat of Feathers, a book of poems.

Joanne Diaz

Joanne Diaz is the recipient of fellowships from the Illinois Arts Council, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Sustainable Arts Foundation. She is the author of My Favorite Tyrants and The Lessons, the co-editor of The Little Magazine in Contemporary America, and the co-host of the Poetry for All podcast. She is the Isaac Funk Endowed Professor of English at Illinois Wesleyan University.

[[New selections indicated with an asterisk]]

Preface for Instructors
Other Ways into the Stories: Alternative Contents

Nathaniel Hawthorne, “Young Goodman Brown”
Edgar Allan Poe, “The Cask of Amontillado”
*Ambrose Bierce, “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge”
Kate Chopin, “The Story of an Hour”
Anton Chekhov, “The Lady with the Dog”
Charlotte Perkins Gilman, “The Yellow Wallpaper”
James Joyce, “Araby”
*Virginia Woolf, “Kew Gardens”
Franz Kafka, “A Hunger Artist”
Katherine Mansfield, “Miss Brill”
William Faulkner, “A Rose for Emily”
Ernest Hemingway, “Hills Like White Elephants”
*Tillie Olsen, “I Stand Here Ironing”
*John Cheever, “The Swimmer”
Ralph Ellison, “Battle Royal”
Shirley Jackson, “The Lottery”
James Baldwin, “Sonny’s Blues”
Flannery O’Connor, “A Good Man Is Hard to Find”
Gabriel García Márquez, “A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings”
Raymond Carver, “Cathedral”
Joyce Carol Oates, “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?”
Toni Cade Bambara, “The Lesson”
Margaret Atwood, “Happy Endings”
Alice Walker, “Everyday Use”
Tim O’Brien, “The Things They Carried”
Leslie Marmon Silko, “The Man to Send Rain Clouds”
Jamaica Kincaid, “Girl”
Sandra Cisneros, “The House on Mango Street”
*Louise Erdrich, “The Red Convertible”
*George Saunders, “Sticks”
*Ted Chiang, “The Great Silence”
*ZZ Packer, “Brownies”
*Adrian Tomine, “Echo Ave”
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, “Birdsong”
Lauren Groff, “At the Round Earth’s Imagined Corners”
*Ramona Ausubel, “You Can Find Love Now”
Karen Russell, “Vampires in the Lemon Grove”
*Neel Patel, “If You See Me, Don’t Say Hi”
*Grace Oluseyi, “A Modern Marriage”
*Meron Hadero, “The Suitcase”

Reading Short Stories Closely
Writing about Short Stories
Biographical Notes on the Authors
Glossary of Literary Terms
Index of Authors and Titles

Product Updates

13 new selections encompass proven classic and contemporary stories as well as exciting recent fiction. Guided by instructor reviews, a third of the fiction has been updated with compelling stories that will engage students. Classic stories that fire students’ imaginations include:

Virginia Woolf, “Kew Gardens”
Tillie Olsen, “I Stand Here Ironing”
John Cheever, “The Swimmer”

Celebrated contemporary and award-winning fiction include:

Ted Chiang, “The Great Silence”
Adrian Tomine, “Echo Ave” (graphic fiction)
Neel Patel, “If You See Me, Don’t Say Hi”

A full-length student essay. Newly added to the coverage of critical writing about fiction, a full-length annotated student literary analysis provides students with a quality model of writing about fiction.

To get the most out of 40 Short Stories, assign it with Achieve for Writer’s Help. Achieve puts student writing at the center of your course and keeps revision at the core, with a dedicated composition space that guides students through drafting, peer review, source check, reflection, and revision. Developed to support best practices in commenting on student drafts, Achieve is a flexible, integrated suite of tools for designing and facilitating writing assignments, paired with actionable insights that make students’ progress towards outcomes clear and measurable. With trusted content from the widely used Hacker or Lunsford handbooks, Writer’s Help takes students through first-year writing and beyond.