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20 Writers to Watch - An Alternate List

The recent 20 Under 40 list composed by The New Yorker contains twenty authors, who in the estimation of the staff of The New Yorker, are “fiction writers who. . . are, or will be, key to their generation.” While it is not the intent of our response to disparage the writers chosen, it is important to point out the flaws of any list which purports to represent an entire body of achievement while having excluded from the very voting process the majority of individuals who work daily with the material under review. As we - the independent publishers, agents, bloggers and reviewers, in total a majority of people working in literary fiction today - were not consulted by The New Yorker in the composition of their list, we feel it is essential to respond to The New Yorker's list with a complementary list of our own, offering another twenty writers worth watching, this time drawn not from a singularly New York view of publishing but from the wider world of the American independent presses.

 

The we referenced here is made up of nearly 100 independent publishers, agents, editors, bloggers and reviewers. As the staff of The New Yorker went to the sources they knew best when creating their list, and most of the authors they reviewed have either been published in The New Yorker or with major New York publishing houses, so we focused on writers publishing with independent houses.  We realize that our list reflects its own prejudices, those coming from a different set of sources than those of The New Yorker, but we did attempt to open our list to a far greater body of voters. Anyone trying to come up with a list of twenty "writers to watch" is going to come under the same scrutiny, but we have done our best to be as transparent and open about our process as possible. Unlike The New Yorker, inclusion on our list was not also dependent on having a story for us to publish. The writers included here were selected purely on the basis of this voting process, without editorial interference.

 

In compiling our list, we invited our voters to name four authors for consideration, splitting their votes between two that are associated with their publishing interests and two they favor independently.  The only other parameters given to the voters were that these writers needed to be North American, and had to have published at least one book with an independent publishing house. (Unlike The New Yorker's list, there were no age restrictions, so the authors did not have to be under forty.) We then compiled the votes, tallied the score, and had a second round of votes for those authors who made the first cut.  Through this purely democratic process, we have compiled a list of twenty authors we find representative of the best talents at work in literary fiction today, including five authors who made the final list on the strength of first round of voting alone. That list, including bios of the authors, can be found below this letter.

    

At no point do we imagine that the twenty writers who have made our list are the exclusive voice of literary fiction.  Our process, however fair it was intended to be, remains at a certain level subjective.  For instance, as we were looking for authors who have published at least one full book with an independent press, we did not consult editors at literary journals, even though such editors would certainly have had their own keen insights and opinions on emerging writers.  In the end, for every writer who made the final twenty, there are dozens of other talented authors worthy of consideration at both the independent and the corporate publishers, including such writers as Allison Amend, Chris Bachelder, Jonathan Baumbach, John Brandon, Lucy Corin, Elizabeth Crane, Lydia Davis, John Domini, Brian Evenson, Percival Everett, Jonathan Evison, Steven  Gillis, Renee Gladman, Rachel B. Glaser, Carol Guess, Paul Harding, Roy Kesey, Victor LaValle, Sam Lipsyte, Emily St. John Mandel, Joseph Mattson, Debra Monroe, Antonya Nelson, Julie Orringer, Jeff Parker, Vanessa Place, Padgett Powell, Dawn Raffel, Emma Straub, Alex Taylor, Christian Tebordo, Deb Olin Unferth, Josh Weil, Colson Whitehead, and Paul Yoon, along with many others who were recognized in the early voting.  

There is obviously much to praise about the work that is published by New York houses, and in The New Yorker, as well as the authors on the New Yorker list.  Nonetheless, we feel it is the independent presses who best represent the heart and soul of understanding what is going on in literary fiction today, and the writers included here have all struck a chord with that community. Each of these writers deserves to have his or her work championed and read by anyone who values great writing.

 

We thank you for taking the time to review our list, and we hope you will consider reading many of the listed authors, who we truly believe are among the best at work today.  

Sincerely,

Dan Wickett, co-founder, executive director, Dzanc Books
Steven Gillis  co-founder, publisher, Dzanc Books
www.dzancbooks.org

 

 

 

20 Writers Worth Watching*

 

Matt Bell is the author of How They Were Found, forthcoming from Keyhole Press in October 2010, as well as three chapbooks, Wolf Parts (Keyhole Press), The Collectors (Caketrain Press), and How the Broken Lead the Blind (Willows Wept Press). His fiction has been selected for inclusion in leading anthologies such as Best American Mystery Stories 2010 and Best American Fantasy 2.  He is the editor of The Collagist and the Best of the Web anthology series.

 

Blake Butler has published the novella Ever (Calamari Press), the short story collection Scorch Atlas (Featherproof Books), and has a novel (2011) and work of non-fiction (2012) forthcoming from Harper Perennial.  He is the editor of HTML Giant:  the Internet Literature Magazine Blog of the Future, Lamination Colony, co-edits No Colony, and co-publisher of Year of the Liquidator Books.

 

M. Allen Cunningham has published two novels, The Green Age of Asher Witherow (Unbridled Books), and Lost Son (Unbridled Books).  Both were BookSense Selections and The Green Age of Asher Witherow was a BookSense Book of the Year finalist as well.

 

Amelia Gray is the author of AM/PM (Featherproof Books). Her book Museum of the Weird is coming out in September 2010 through FC2.  She co-directs the Five Things series in Austin, Texas.

 

Samantha Hunt has published two novels, The Seas (MacAdam/Cage) and The Invention of Everything Else (Houghton Mifflin).  The Invention of Everything Else was a finalist for the Orange Prize.

 

Jamie Iredell has published the chapbook Atlanta (Achilles Chapbook Series), the chapbook When I Moved to Nevada (Greying Ghost Press), and the chapbook Before I Moved to Nevada (Publishing Genius).   This trio was combined to create the book Prose. Poems. A Novel (Orange Alert Press).

 

Kelly Link is the author of three collections of short stories, Stranger Things Happen (Small Beer Press), Magic for Beginners (Small Beer Press), and Pretty Monsters (Viking). Her short stories have won three Nebulas, a Hugo, and a World Fantasy Award.  She co-runs Small Beer Press with her husband.

 

Norman Lock is the author of The King of Sweden (Ravenna Press), Shadowplay (Ellipsis Press), A History of the Imagination (FC2), ‘The Book of Supplemental Diagrams’ for Marco Knauff’s Universe (Ravenna Press), The Long Rowing Unto Morning (Ravenna Press), Two Plays for Radio (Triple Press), and–writing as George Belden–Land of the Snow Men (from Calamari Press and in Japanese from Kawade Shobo).

 

Gary Lutz is a professor of English and composition at the University of Pittsburgh in Greenburg.  He’s published the short story collections Stories in the Worst Way (Knopf, 1996, re-released by 3^rd Bed in 2002), I Looked Alive (Four Walls Eight Rooms, 2003), and Partial List of People to Bleach (Future Tense Press, 2007).

 

Sarah Manguso is the author of the memoir The Two Kinds of Decay (2008), published by Farrar, Straus & Giroux and Granta Books, and of the story collection Hard to Admit and Harder to Escape (2007), included in McSweeney's One Hundred and Forty-Five Stories in a Small Box. Her poetry collections are Siste Viator (2006) and The Captain Lands in Paradise (2002).

 

Eugene Marten has published the novels In the Blind (Turtle Point Press), Waste (Ellipsis Press), and the forthcoming Firework (Tyrant Books).  He lives in New York City.

 

Scott McClanahan has published two short story collections, Stories (Six Galleries Press) and Stories II (Six Galleries Press).  He is also a filmmaker and a native of West Virginia.  He is co-partner of the company Holler Presents, which has produced such films as Preacher Man, Spring, 1386, The Education of Bertie Mae McClanahan, and Lil Audrey's Last Day at School.

 

Mary Miller has published two short story collections, Less Shiny (Magic Helicopter Press) and Big World (Short Flight Long Drive).

 

Lydia Millet has published Omnivores (Workman), George Bush: Dark Prince of Love (Touchstone), My Happy Life (Henry Holt), Everyone's Pretty (Soft Skull Press), Oh Pure and Radiant Heart (Soft Skull Press), and How the Dead Dream (Counterpoint), and the short story collection, Love in Infant Monkeys (Soft Skull Press).

 

Kyle Minor published the short story collection, In the Devil’s Territory (Dzanc Books), from which his novella “A Day Meant to Do Less” was anthologized in Best American Mystery Stories 2008.  He co-edited the anthology, The Other Chekhov (New American Press), and had an essay published in Twentysomething Essays by Twentysomething Writers (Random House).

 

Yannick Murphy is the author of the novels, The Call (forthcoming 2011), Signed, Mata Hari, Here They Come, and Sea of Trees. Her story collections include Stories in Another Language and In a Bear’s Eye. Her children's books include The Cold Water Witch (forthcoming Fall '10), Baby Polar, and Ahwoooooooo! She is the recipient of various awards including a Whiting Writer's Award, a National Endowment for the Arts award, and a Chesterfield Screenwriting award. Her story “In a Bear’s Eye” was recently published in the 2007 O. Henry Prize Stories.

 

Lori Ostlund’s short story collection, The Bigness of the World, won the 2008 Flannery O'Connor Award for Short Fiction and was published in the fall of 2009. Stories from it appeared in The Georgia Review, New England Review, The Kenyon Review, Prairie Schooner, Bellingham Review, Hobart, and Blue Mesa Review. In the summer of 2009, she was chosen for a Rona Jaffe Foundation Writers' Award.

 

Benjamin Percy has published two short story collections, The Language of Elk (Carnegie Mellon University Press), and Refresh, Refresh (Graywolf Press), and has a novel, The Wilding, forthcoming this fall from Graywolf Press.  He has won a Whiting Award, the Plimpton Award, and his story “Refresh, Refresh” was anthologized in Pushcart Prize Stories (2007) and Best American Short Stories 2006.

 

Justin Taylor is the editor of The Apocalypse Reader (Thunder’s Mouth, 2007), and Come Back, Donald Barthelme (McSweeney’s 2007). His own books include a poetry collection, More Perfect Depictions of Noise (X-ing Books, 2008) and a short story collection, Everything Here is the Best Thing Ever (Harper Perennial, 2010). He also co-edits The Agriculture Reader, a limited-edition arts annual.

 

Laura van den Berg’s short story collection, What the World Will Look Like When All the Water Leaves Us (Dzanc Books), was a Barnes & Noble Discover Great Writers selection, a finalist for the IPPY Short Fiction Award, and was long-listed for the Frank O’Connor Short Fiction Award.

 

*The writers are listed here in alphabetical order.

Dzanc Creative Writing Sessions and an Offer

Since announcing Dzanc's Creative Writing Sessions a little over a year ago, Dzanc Books has provided mentoring help for over 150 writers, including published authors as well as students who, having gone through our DCWS, had their first stories appear in literary journals.  With more than 100 great authors to choose from among our list of writing mentors, and with a program unique and less expensive that anything else being offered today, the feedback to our program has been extremely favorable:

 

"Thank you so much. I'm thrilled with my DCWS experience, and the level of thought and critique I received. Tremendously helpful, I will definitely do this again."

--Marie Gauthier 

 

"I can't say enough about how valuable this process has been for me -- and will continue to be as I digest her comments and revise my story. Her insight, encouragement and suggestions are just what I needed. I will definitely participate in this program again in the future! Thanks so much for the opportunity."
-- Jennifer Hollmeyer  

 

In addition to reminding you of the usual benefits of our mentoring program, we're also writing to announce a new summer-long special: In order to further spread the news of our fantastic program beyond the scope of our own reach, we would like to offer free sessions to those who help us get the word out. For every three sessions ordered by people who tell us that they heard about the DCWS from you, we will give you a free one hour session.

 

As a reminder, the DCWS is founded on the principle that many authors' lifestyles do not afford them the opportunity to obtain feedback on their writing - be it where they live, their work schedule, or finances. We feel that all authors deserve the opportunity to have their work reviewed. Unlike most of the current workshop opportunities - MFA programs, Low-Residency programs, colonies, online classes, etc. - the DCWS is unique in that it allows the writer to determine the parameters for their own review sessions. With the DCWS, you sign up for what you want and need, not some pre-determined program.

The DCWS is designed to provide a one-on-one working relationship with a published author, allowing you to benefit from their experiences as writers and teachers. As noted, over 100 great authors have already agreed to volunteer their services as mentors in our DCWS program, including award-winning authors and teachers such as: George Singleton, Myfanwy Collins, Dawn Raffel, Elizabeth Crane, Peter Markus, Katrina Denza, Laura van den Berg, Kevin Wilson, Brent Goodman, Jeff Parker, and Robert Lopez. Writers participating in the DCWS select an available author to work with, then have their work critiqued and commented upon with the ability to have particular questions considered as well.

The DCWS utilizes email to eliminate the limitations of both time and distance in gaining access to feedback about your work.  Students will send their work and questions to us at Dzanc, and we will then send all materials on to the mentoring author.  The author, in turn, will send their comments and responses back to us - typically within ten days - and we will forward these comments to the students.

The program is being offered at an extremely low rate: Many of the instructing authors volunteering their time to Dzanc do similar work as freelancers and charge much greater rates than are being offered here through the DCWS. Other workshops and writing programs charge a lump sum of several hundred dollars up front. Not only does the DCWS allow you to control and target your expenses, but 100% of the money brought in by Dzanc by our DCWS goes to supporting the writing programs we run for students in grades 4-12. These additional programs - currently being run nationally by Dzanc - are offered free of charge to students who would not otherwise be able to afford and experience these sort of writing programs. 

The DCWS sessions are set up in hourly blocks and can be ordered as follows:

1 hour  - $20
2 hours - $30
4 hours - $50

 

The DCWS eliminates your need to travel to a university. It also eliminates your need to lay out a few hundred dollars up front for an eight or ten week online course. It allows you to jump in and out when you are available, and also allows you to select from the list of authors that have generously volunteered their time to this project. A full list is available at our website. This list includes published novelists, short story writers, flash fiction writers, poets and non-fiction writers. If you're not sure which author to select, we'll be happy to simply assign a writer to you.  

For more information on our Creative Writing Sessions program, please send an email to info@dzancbooks.org.  In order to sign up now, head over to visiting the DCWS page at our website and select your author. After deciding how many hours to work with your mentor, click on the Paypal button that corresponds to that number, and fill in the mentor name in the appropriate field, then we'll get you started immediately. Please remember to add a note with your Paypal payment if somebody specific sent you our way.

 

Below are additional testimonials to our service:

 

"I am so glad you guys have this, I cannot tell you how pleased I am."

-- James Moore

"I found the experience quite wonderful."
 
-- Caitlin Hamilton

"Thank you so much for your time and for your words of encouragement. And thanks especially for being so straight with me -- this is exactly the kind of tough coaching I need."

-- Michael Mussman

"Thanks so much for the in-depth critique . . . Also, I'm applying your no-holds barred editorial style to many of my other stories. I appreciate your time and insights."

-- John Fox

"I wanted to let you, and Michele Battiste, know that your program through her guidance has been extremely useful for me. I had gotten to a point in my project at which I felt stuck, and I don't have an effective writers group here in Japan to help me. Michele's comments and critique reminded me of some long-standing tendencies that I had forgotten I need to avoid, and she also made some insightful points which were new ideas for me. Best of all, I am reinvigorated and working hard on the project again. Thank you so much for that."

-- Jessica Goodfellow

 

And another student of the sessions wrote up a really nice review over at HTML Giant.

 

We hope you'll either take advantage of the DCWS, or pass the word along to your friends that may be in need of a little help with their writing. We believe our DCWS is the most innovative online writing workshop being offered today. If you've got a website, literary journal, literary blog, or any other means of spreading information along, including emailing friends, we'd greatly appreciate your spreading the word about the DCWS.

Sincerely,

Steven Gillis
Dan Wickett
Dzanc Books
www.dzancbooks.org