The Pushcart Prize XXI: Best of the Small Presses 1997 Edition

By William Matthews, Patricia Strachen, Bill Henderson

Book Overview

Reviewing last year's edition of The Pushcart Prize, Booklist commented, "If you buy one 'best of' anthology this year, make it the Pushcart Prize." The Chicago Tribune recently raved: "When it comes to contemporary American literature, the small press is where the action is . . . of all anthologies, Pushcart's is the most rewarding to read straight through." In Pushcart Prize XXI, over sixty selections of short stories, essays, and poetry have been picked from thousands of nominations by Pushcart Press staff, contributing editors, and hundreds of small presses. This year Patricia Strachan and William Matthews served as poetry editors. The result is an introduction to a literary world that few readers have access to, where much of today's important new writing is published, far from the commercial influence of the conglomerates. The Pushcart Prize has been chosen for two Book-of-the-Month Club QPBC selections, named many times as "an outstanding book of the year" by the New York Times Book Review, and honored with Publishers Weekly's Carey-Thomas Award.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0916366960
• ISBN13: 9780916366964
• Release Date: November 1996
• Publisher: Pushcart Press
• Length: 625 Pages
• Weight: 1.70 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.9" x 9.6" x 6.7"

Customer Reviews

You ought to be ashamed

The Pushcart Prize is the most wonderful and rewarding annual anthology out there because, for one thing, it's the most fair--as Bill Henderson says in his introduction, there's no money here. You don't have to have written a bestseller or be in with the "New Yorker" crowd in order to be published here. All you have to do is be a good writer. Here is fiction and poetry at its rawest and purest form, from writers who write for the sake of writing, for the sheer love of it. This is a noble thing.