The O. Henry Prize Stories 2014
Page 38
Maura Stanton, “Oh Shenandoah”
This story started with a true incident. One May in Venice, where I’d gone to escape the spring pollen, I broke the toilet seat in the apartment I was renting. I was afraid the landlady would charge me a fortune, so I decided to replace it myself. I wandered around Venice, with some addresses copied from the phone book, but I had no luck at all. It was an absurd quest in a city full of glass and lace and masks and marbled paper. Eventually I gave up, and paid the landlady thirty euros.
But I was writing stories about Venice, and the quest for the toilet seat seemed like something that might be interesting to write about—the unromantic side of Venice. But I didn’t really have a story, just an anecdote, for a long time. Then Marie appeared. As I struggled to get the story going, I glanced up at a postcard from a neighbor pinned to my bulletin board, and I gave it to Marie. That’s how Virginia Woolf’s quote got into the story and contributed to the theme. Then Hugo appeared. Once my characters took over, the story started to breathe and grow. Marie had a decision to make about her relationship with Hugo. Who was Hugo? I recalled being thrilled a few years ago on another trip to Venice by a chorus of college students singing “Shenandoah” on the Strada Nova—so I put them into the story and Hugo came into focus. And once my invented world got untethered from the real world, and started obeying its own laws, I was finally able to find that toilet seat.
Maura Stanton was born in Evanston, Illinois, and grew up in Chicago, Peoria, and Minneapolis. She has published a novel, Molly Companion, and three books of short stories, The Country I Come From; Do Not Forsake Me, Oh My Darling; and Cities in the Sea, as well as six books of poetry, including Snow on Snow, which won the Yale Series of Younger Poets award. She is the recipient of two fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, and her stories have won the Nelson Algren Award from the Chicago Tribune, the Lawrence Foundation Prize from the Michigan Quarterly Review, and the Michigan Literary Fiction Award. She lives in Bloomington, Indiana.
William Trevor, “The Women”
William Trevor was born in 1928 at Mitchelstown, County Cork, and spent his childhood in provincial Ireland. His novels include Fools of Fortune, Felicia’s Journey, and The Story of Lucy Gault. He is a renowned short-story writer and has published fifteen story collections, from The Day We Got Drunk on Cake to his most recent, Selected Stories. Trevor lives in Devon, England.
Kirstin Valdez Quade, “Nemecia”
When I was a child, the best items in my dress-up box had once belonged to my godmother: chiffon gowns, fur stoles, heeled satin slippers with pink feathers on the toes. In the thirties and forties, my godmother had been a successful competitive ballroom dancer in Hollywood. When I knew her, she was already in her eighties, but she was still blond and made-up. She was generous and expansive and always laughing. I adored her.
Only after her death did I learn details she’d never spoken of: She’d grown up not in Los Angeles, but in the same dusty little New Mexico town my relatives came from. Her first language was Spanish and she wasn’t a natural blonde. I learned that when she was five years old, my godmother had watched as her father brutally beat her mother and murdered her grandfather.
The story I heard was just an outline, and Nemecia isn’t my godmother. I reshaped these events and peopled them with fictional characters who brought their own agendas and needs to the story. As I wrote I was thinking about the complicated effects of trauma: the way it can elevate and debase, connect and isolate. Trauma can make us more resilient, yes, more empathetic, maybe, yet it can also make us small and ugly and self-protective. Sometimes trauma does all these things at once.
Kirstin Valdez Quade was born in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and lived all over the Southwest as a child. She was a Wallace Stegner and a Truman Capote Fellow at Stanford University, and her fiction has appeared in The New Yorker, The Best American Short Stories 2013, Narrative, Guernica, Best of the West 2010, and elsewhere. She won a 2013 Rona Jaffe Foundation Writers’ Award and has received fellowships and grants from Yaddo, the MacDowell Colony, and the Elizabeth George Foundation. Her story collection and novel are forthcoming. She lives in the Bay Area.
Laura van den Berg, “Opa-locka”
In the spring of 2011, I was a writer in residence at the Gilman School, an all-boys school in Baltimore. I started “Opa-locka” in my office at Gilman; I liked the energy there. I was thinking a lot about sisters and also about Florida, where I’m from, and at my desk, with the sound of teenage boys roaming the halls in the background, I wrote the first paragraph, then got stuck for a while. I knew I wanted a mystery to surround Mr. Defonte, but I couldn’t figure out what I wanted the outcome of the mystery to be, the overall trajectory of the story. When I realized that this story was not about solving a mystery but rather about the unsolvability of so many of our personal mysteries, about what being consumed by mystery can do to a person over time, I got unstuck in a hurry.
Laura van den Berg is the author of the story collections The Isle of Youth and What the World Will Look Like When All the Water Leaves Us, which was a Barnes & Noble “Discover Great New Writers” selection and shortlisted for the Frank O’Connor International Short Story Award. Her first novel, Find Me, is forthcoming in 2015. A Florida native, she lives in the Boston area.
Publications Submitted
Stories published in American and Canadian magazines are eligible for consideration for inclusion in The O. Henry Prize Stories. Stories must be written originally in the English language. No translations are considered. Sections of novels are not considered. Editors are asked not to nominate individual stories. Stories may not be submitted by agents or writers.
Editors are invited to submit online fiction for consideration, but such submissions must be sent to the address on the next page in the form of a legible hard copy. The publication’s contact information and the date of the story’s publication must accompany the submissions.
Because of production deadlines for the 2015 collection, it is essential that stories reach the series editor by July 1, 2014. If a finished magazine is unavailable before the deadline, magazine editors are welcome to submit scheduled stories in proof or manuscript. Publications received after July 1, 2014, will automatically be considered for The O. Henry Prize Stories 2016.
Please see our Web site, www.ohenryprizestories.com, for more information about submission to The O. Henry Prize Stories.
The address for submission is:
Laura Furman, Series Editor, The O. Henry Prize Stories
The University of Texas at Austin
English Department, B5000
1 University Station
Austin, TX 78712
The information listed below was up-to-date when The O. Henry Prize Stories 2014 went to press. Inclusion in this listing does not constitute endorsement or recommendation by The O. Henry Prize Stories or Anchor Books.
A Public Space
323 Dean Street
Brooklyn, NY 11217
Brigid Hughes, editor
general@apublicspace.org
apublicspace.org
quarterly
AGNI Magazine
Boston University
236 Bay State Road
Boston, MA 02215
agni@bu.edu
bu.edu/agni
semiannual
Alaska Quarterly Review
University of Alaska Anchorage
3211 Providence Drive
Anchorage, AK 99508
Ronald Spatz, editor
aqr@uaa.alaska.edu
uaa.alaska.edu/aqr
semiannual
Alligator Juniper
Prescott College
220 Grove Avenue
Prescott, AZ 86301
Skye Anicca, editor
alligatorjuniper@prescott.edu
prescott.edu/alligator_juniper
annual
American Athenaeum
Hunter Ligu
ore, editor
editor@swordandsagapress.com
swordandsagapress.com/American-Athenaeum.php
quarterly
American Letters & Commentary
Department of English
University of Texas at San Antonio
One UTSA Circle
San Antonio, TX 78249
David Ray Vance and Catherine Kasper, editors
AmerLetters@satx.rr.com
amletters.org
annual
American Literary Review
PO Box 311307
University of North Texas
Denton, TX 76203-1307
Ann McCutchan, editor
americanliteraryreview@gmail.com
engl.unt.edu/alr
semiannual
American Short Fiction
PO Box 4152
Austin, TX 78765
Rebecca Markovits and Adeena Reitberger, editors
editors@americanshortfiction.org
americanshortfiction.org
triannual
Apalachee Review
PO Box 10469
Tallahassee, FL 32302
Michael Trammell and Jenn Bronson, editors
mtrammell@cob.fsu.edu
apalacheereview.org
semiannual
Arkansas Review
PO Box 1890
Arkansas State University
State University, AR 72467
Janelle Collins, editor
arkansasreview@astate.edu
altweb.astate.edu/arkreview
triannual
Armchair/Shotgun
377 Flatbush Avenue
Brooklyn, NY 11238-4393
Aaron Reuben, editor
info@armchairshotgun.com
armchairshotgun.wordpress.com
semiannual
Arroyo Literary Review
Department of English, MB 2579
California State University, East Bay
25800 Carlos Bee Boulevard
Hayward, CA 94542
Christopher Morgan, editor
arroyoliteraryreview@gmail.com
arroyoliteraryreview.com
annual
Baltimore Review
Barbara Westwood Diehl and Kathleen Hellen, editors
editor@baltimorereview.org
baltimorereview.org
quarterly
Bellevue Literary Review
NYU Langone Medical Center
Department of Medicine
550 First Avenue, OBV-A612
New York, NY 10016
Ronna Wineberg, JD, editor
info@BLReview.org
BLReview.org
semiannual
Black Clock
California Institute of the Arts
24700 McBean Parkway
Valencia, CA 91355
Steve Erickson, editor
info@blackclock.org
blackclock.org
semiannual
Black Warrior Review
Office of Student Media
The University of Alabama
PO Box 870170
Tuscaloosa, AL 35487
Kirby Johnson, editor
blackwarriorreview@gmail.com
bwr.ua.edu
semiannual
Bodega
Emily Pan, editor
editor@bodegamag.com
bodegamag.com
monthly
BOMB Magazine
80 Hanson Place
Suite 703
Brooklyn, NY 11217
Betsy Sussler, editor
generalinquiries@bombsite.com
bombsite.com
quarterly
bosque (the magazine)
Lynn C. Miller and Lisa Lenard-Cook, editors
admin@abqwriterscoop.com
abqwriterscoop.com/bosque.html
annual
Boulevard Magazine
6614 Clayton Road
Box 325
Richmond Heights, MO 63117
Richard Burgin, editor
richardburgin@att.net
boulevardmagazine.org
triannual
Brain, Child
Publishing Office
341 Newtown Turnpike
Wilton, CT 06897
Marcelle Soviero, editor
editorial@brainchildmag.com
brainchildmag.com
quarterly
Calyx
PO Box B
Corvallis, OR 97339
editorial collective
info@calyxpress.org
calyxpress.org
semiannual
Camera Obscura
c/o Sfumato Press
PO Box 2356
Addison, TX 75001
M. E. Parker, editor
editor@obscurajournal.com
obscurajournal.com
semiannual
Carve Magazine
PO Box 701510
Dallas, TX 75370
Matthew Limpede, editor
managingeditor@carvezine.com
carvezine.com
quarterly
Chicago Review
Taft House
935 East 60th Street
Chicago, IL 60637
Joel Calahan and Chalcey Wilding, editors
chicago-review@uchicago.edu
humanities.uchicago.edu/orgs/review
triannual
Cimarron Review
Oklahoma State University
English Department
205 Morrill Hall
Stillwater, OK 74078
Toni Graham, editor
cimarronreview@okstate.edu
cimarronreview.com
quarterly
Colorado Review
9105 Campus Delivery
Department of English
Colorado State University
Fort Collins, CO 80523-9105
Stephanie G’Schwind, editor
creview@colostate.edu
coloradoreview.colostate.edu
triannual
Confrontation Magazine
720 Northern Boulevard
Brookville, NY 11548
Jonna G. Semeiks, editor
confrontationmag@gmail.com
confrontationmagazine.org
semiannual
Conjunctions
21 East 10th Street, #3E
New York, NY 10003
Bradford Morrow, editor
conjunctions@bard.edu
conjunctions.com
semiannual
Consequence Magazine
PO Box 323
Cohasset, MA 02025
George Kovach, editor
consequencemagazine.org
annual
Crab Orchard Review
Department of English
Faner Hall 2380
Mail Code 4503
Southern Illinois University,
Carbondale
1000 Faner Drive
Carbondale, IL 62901
Allison Joseph, editor
craborchardreview.siu.edu
semiannual
Crazyhorse
Department of English
College of Charleston
66 George Street
Charleston, SC 29424
Jonathan Bohr Heinen, editor
crazyhorse@cofc.edu
crazyhorse.cofc.edu/
semiannual
cream city review
Department of English
University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee
PO Box 413
Milwaukee, WI 53201
Ching-In Chen, editor
info@creamcityreview.org
creamcityreview.org
semian
nual
CutBank
University of Montana
English Department, LA 133
Missoula, MT 59812
Rachel Mindell, editor
editor.cutbank@gmail.com
cutbankonline.org
semiannual
Cutthroat
Raven’s Word Writers Center
PO Box 2414
Durango, CO 81302
Pamela Uschuk, editor
cutthroatmag@gmail.com
cutthroatmag.com
annual
Dappled Things
Meredith Wise, editor
dappledthings.editor@gmail.com
dappledthings.org
quarterly
Denver Quarterly
University of Denver
Department of English
2000 East Asbury
Denver, CO 80208
Laird Hunt, editor
http://www.du.edu/denverquarterly/
quarterly
descant
c/o TCU Department of English
Box 29727014
2850 South University Drive
Fort Worth, TX 76129
Dave Kuhne, editor
descant@tcu.edu
descant.tcu.edu
annual
Ecotone
Department of Creative Writing
University of North Carolina, Wilmington
601 South College Road
Wilmington, NC 28403-5938
Anna Lena Phillips, editor
info@ecotonejournal.com
ecotonejournal.com
semiannual
Electric Literature’s
Recommended Reading
147 Prince Street
Brooklyn, NY 11201
Halimah Marcus and Benjamin Samuel, editors
http://recommendedreading.tumblr.com