Carrie Brown: The best American short stories

Posted on October 01, 2010 by Staff Writer

The 2010 edition of “The Best American Short Stories,” released by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, lists Carrie Brown’s “A Splendid Life” among its most notable stories of the year.

The list appears at the back of the printed edition, now available in stores and online. This prestigious series has been printing anthologies of American authors’ most outstanding work since 1915.

“Thousands of wonderful stories are published in journals every year,” Brown said. “I’m very pleased that ‘A Splendid Life’ made ‘The Best American’ Notables List.

“The story is about a man, a retired psychiatrist, who returns to his childhood home on a lake and has a surprising re-encounter with his past and a girl he’d known as a boy,” she said.

“A Splendid Life” was published in the Jan. 30, 2009 issue of One Story, a literary journal that prints one short story every three weeks. Brown’s story “Bomb,” which last year won Glimmer Train’s fiction contest, will be published in the journal’s next issue.

Carrie Brown, Margaret Banister Writer-in-Residence at Sweet Briar, is the author of the novels “Rose’s Garden,” “Lamb in Love,” “The Hatbox Baby,” “Confinement” and “The Rope Walk,” as well as the short story collection “The House on Belle Isle.” She has received the Barnes and Noble Discover Award, the Janet Heidinger Kafka Prize and a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship. She has twice been the recipient of the Library of Virginia Book of the Year Award.