I coedited, with Porter Shreve, three anthologies for Pearson Longman: 30/30: Thirty American Stories from the Last Thirty Years; Contemporary Creative Nonfiction: I & Eye; and The Contemporary American Short Story.
The Contemporary American Short Story
"This comprehensive anthology of contemporary American short fiction focuses on the story and its context from 1960 to the present. The over 50 stories featured in Nguyen and Shreve's anthology range in style from the traditional narrative to experimental forms. Classic stories are juxtaposed with newer, often unexpected voices. The stories are thematically diverse as well, addressing issues of family and culture, love and loss, ethnicity and gender."
Here are the Contemporary American Short Story pages at Pearson Longman, Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and Powells.
Table of Contents
Preface
Introduction
Short Stories:
Sherman Alexie, “Because My Father Always Said He Was the Only Indian Who Saw Jimi Hendrix Play 'The Star-Spangled Banner' at Woodstock”
Dorothy Allison, “River of Names”
Margaret Atwood, “Happy Endings”
Toni Cade Bambara, “The Lesson”
Andrea Barrett, “The Littoral Zone”
John Barth, “Lost in the Funhouse”
Donald Barthelme, “The School”
Richard Bausch, “The Man Who Knew Belle Star”
Charles Baxter, “Gryphon”
Ann Beattie, “Janus”
Gina Berriault, “The Birthday Party”
Raymond Carver, “Cathedral”
John Cheever, “The Swimmer”
Sandra Cisneros, “The Monkey Garden”
Peter Ho Davies, “The Hull Case”
Junot Díaz, “Fiesta, 1980”
Andre Dubus, “The Fat Girl”
Stuart Dybek, “Pet Milk”
Nathan Englander, “In This Way We Are Wise”
Louise Erdrich, “The Red Convertible”
Carolyn Ferrell, “Proper Library”
Richard Ford, “Communist”
Karen Joy Fowler, “The Elizabeth Complex”
Pam Houston, “How to Talk to a Hunter”
Gish Jen, “In the American Society”
Ha Jin, “The Woman from New York”
Charles Johnson, “Menagerie: A Child's Fable”
Denis Johnson, “Emergency”
Jamaica Kincaid, “Girl”
Jhumpa Lahiri, “The Third and Final Continent”
David Leavitt, “Gravity”
Andrea Lee, “Brothers and Sisters Around the World”
Ursula K. Le Guin, “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas”
Bernard Malamud, “The Jewbird”
James Alan McPherson, “Of Cabbages and Kings”
Bobbie Ann Mason, “Shiloh”
David Means, “What They Did”
Lorrie Moore, “Which Is More Than I Can Say About Some People”
Bharati Mukherjee, “The Management of Grief”
Alice Munro, “The Turkey Season”
Joyce Carol Oates, “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?”
Tim O'Brien, “The Things They Carried”
Flannery O'Connor, “Everything That Rises Must Converge”
Grace Paley, “Wants”
Jayne Anne Phillips, “Satisfaction”
Mark Richard, “Strays”
George Saunders, “My Flamboyant Grandson”
Akhil Sharma, “Surrounded by Sleep”
Leslie Marmon Silko, “Yellow Woman”
Susan Sontag, “The Way We Live Now”
John Updike, “Here Come the Maples”
Helena Maria Viramontes, “The Moths”
Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., “Harrison Bergeron”
Alice Walker, “Everyday Use”
John Edgar Wideman, “newborn thrown in trash and dies”
Tobias Wolff, “The Rich Brother”
Author Commentaries
Sherman Alexie, “The Joy of Reading and Writing: Superman and Me”
Dorothy Allison, “Context”
Richard Bausch, “Dear Writer”
Jamaica Kincaid, “Those Words That Echo . . . Echo . . . Echo . . . Through Life”
Bharati Mukherjee, “A Four-Hundred-Year-Old Woman”
Alice Munro, “What is Real?”
Joyce Carol Oates, “Why is Your Writing So Violent?”
Flannery O’Connor, “Writing Short Stories”
Grace Paley, “The Value of Not Understanding Everything”
Susan Sontag, “Directions: Write, Read, Rewrite. Repeat Steps 2 and 3 as Needed”