Scribner's Best of the Fiction Workshops

Sherman Alexie has done an excellent job in selecting stories for what, regrettably, looks to be the last in Scribner's Best of the Fiction Workshops. Though I have at times been guilty of blasting many stories written in graduate school as being unpublishable, I rank 12 of these 19 as at least "above average," 5 of those 12 as "good," and Adam Johnson's "Death-Dealing Cassini Satellite," which begins the collection with a tale of a young bus driver's interactions with cancer patients, as truly excellent.Alexie certainly allows the reader to take a journey throughout the literary world, as tales from Vietnam, to the Pacific Islands, to Nepal, and back to the States are presented. Along with Johnson, the University of New Hampshire proves its students are on the right track with Laura E. Miller's "Lowell's Class," concerning a poet whose struggles and successes in the field are deftly covered from workshop study to the brink of old age, as well as Clark E. Knowles's haunting tale of abduction and fear in "Little George." The other all-star short stories include Dika Lam's "Judas Kiss" and Kim Thorsen's "Alien Bodies."Though there are a few clunkers in the mix, Alexie's decisions have been justified with SS collections published to much acclaim by Johnson, Christie Hodgen, and Samrat Upadhyay, all of whom first gained national exposure through this series, which Scribner would do itself a favor by renewing.

I love this anthology--it's filled with great stories. My favorite is "Judas Kiss" by Dika Lam. It's beautiful, innovative, and original; this series of anthologies refutes the idea that there is such a thing as a "workshop" story.