Work, and the coffee-fueled day-to-day grind, is the shared concern of these stories, which have been chosen from among the hundreds that have appeared in the prestigious Flannery O'Connor Award for Short Fiction series.

More than seventy volumes, which include approximately eight hundred stories, have won the Flannery O'Connor Award. This stunning trove of always engaging, often groundbreaking short fiction is the common source for this anthology on work-and for planned anthologies on such topics as family, gender and sexuality, animals, and more.

Sometimes work is rewarding, and sometimes it's just demanding. From the cubicle to the courtroom, from the stage to the station. These fifteen stories reflect upon the time we dedicate to the jobs we do, from the moment we begin our commute to the second we return home, and every hardworking hour in between.

About the Author
ETHAN LAUGHMAN is a recruitment, marketing, and communications specialist at the University of Georgia's College of Environment and Design. Among the few who have read every Flannery O'Connor Award-winning volume, he has collaborated closely with the series' authors in compiling these new anthologies. ROBERT ABEL (1941-2017) was the author of Full-tilt Boogie; The Progress of a Fire; Freedom Dues, or, A Gentleman's Progress in the New World; and Skin and Bones. His collection of stories, Ghost Traps, received the 1990 Flannery O'Connor Award for Short Fiction. His stories have appeared in Playgirl, Contact, and Denver Quarterly. WENDY BRENNER is the author of two books of short fiction, Large Animals in Everyday Life, her first collection and winner of the 1995 Flannery O'Connor Award for Short Fiction, and Phone Calls From the Dead. Her stories and essays have appeared in Best American Essays, Best American Magazine Writing, New Stories From the South, Oxford American, The Sun, Allure, Travel & Leisure, Seventeen, Guernica, and elsewhere. She is the recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, a contributing editor for The Oxford American, and an associate professor of creative writing at the University of North Carolina, Wilmington. DAVID CROUSE is the author of Copy Cats, which received the 2004 Flannery O'Connor Award for Short Fiction, and The Man Back There, which received the Mary McCarthy Fiction Prize in 2008. Trouble Will Save You, a collection of novellas, will be published in early 2021. David is full professor of English at the University of Washington and also serves as the Director of the MFA Program. David's stories have appeared in such publications as the Massachusetts Review, Beloit Fiction Journal, Chelsea, and Quarterly West. ALFRED DePEW has taught at the Universities of Vermont and New Hampshire, the Maine College of Art, the Salt Center for Documentary Studies, and Haystack Mountain School of Crafts. He is the author of The Melancholy of Departure, winner of the 1991 Flannery O'Connor Award for Short Fiction, Wild and Woolly: A Journal Keeper's Handbook (2004), and A Wedding Song for Poorer People, which was a 2014 INDIEFAB Book of the Year Finalist. His most recent novella, Odalisque, is set in the Quebec City of Les Automatistes and their Refus global after World War II. He lives in Vancouver, British Columbia, where he maintains a private practice in leadership development, spiritual direction, professional supervision, evolutionary astrology, and dreamwork. He may be reached by email at adepew@earthlink.net or by phone (604) 568-3621. CAROLE L. GLICKFELD grew up in New York City, the setting of Useful Gifts, which won the 1988 Flannery O'Connor Award for Short Fiction, and Swimming Toward the Ocean, a novel that won the Washington State Book Award. She was the recipient of a Literary Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, a Governor's Arts Award (Washington State) and was a fellow of both the MacDowell Colony and the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference. Her stories and essays have appeared in numerous literary journals and anthologies. Now living in Seattle where she has taught creative writing, she works on a consulting basis with aspiring writers on their manuscripts when she is not indulging her passion for travel. MELINDA MOUSTAKIS is the author of Bear Down, Bear North: Alaska Stories, winner of the 2010 Flannery O'Connor Award in Short Fiction and a 5 Under 35 selection by the National Book Foundation. Her work has appeared in American Short Fiction, Alaska Quarterly Review, Granta, and elsewhere. She is the recipient of the O. Henry Award, the Hodder Fellowship at Princeton University, the NEA Literature Fellowship in Fiction, the Kenyon Review Fellowship at Kenyon College, the Jenny McKean Moore Writer-in-Washington Fellowship at George Washington University, and the Rona Jaffe Cullman Fellowship at the New York Public Library. RANDY F. NELSON is the author of The Imaginary Lives of Mechanical Men, which received the 2005 Flannery O'Connor Award for Short Fiction, A Duplicate Daughter, The Overlook Martial Arts Reader, and The Almanac of American Letters. His stories have appeared in such publications as Gettysburg Review, North American Review, and Kenyon Review. GINA OCHSNER is the author of The Necessary Grace to Fall, which received the 2001 Flannery O'Connor Award for Short Fiction Her stories have appeared in such publications as The Bellingham Review, Image, The New Yorker, Tin House, Iron Horse Review, and The Kenyon Review, and have received numerous awards, including the Ruth Hindman Foundation Prize, the Raymond Carver Prize, and the Chelsea Award for Short Fiction. She is the author of The Hidden Letters of Velta B, The Russian Dreambook of Colour and Flight, and Pleased to be Otherwise, among other books. ANDY PLATTNER is the author of Winter Money, which received the 1996 Flannery O'Connor Award for Short Fiction. He has published three other books of literary fiction: A Marriage of Convenience, Offerings from a Rust Belt Jockey, and Dixie Luck, stories and the novella Terminal. His fiction has earned two gold medals from the Faulkner Society, the Dzanc Mid-Career Novel Prize, a Henfield Prize, the Ferrol Sams Fiction Award, the Castleton-Lyons Book Award and a silver medal in literary fiction from the Independent Book Publishers' Awards. MONICA MCFAWN is a writer, artist, and performer living in Michigan. Her short story collection Bright Shards of Someplace Else won the Flannery O'Connor Award for Short Fiction as well as a Michigan Notable Book award. She is also the author of an art and poetry chapbook, "A Catalogue of Rare Movements," and her drawings and animations have been shown in galleries around the country. McFawn is a recipient of an NEA Fellowship in Literature and Walter E. Dakin Fellowship from the Sewanee Writers' Conference. She is an assistant professor at Northern Michigan University, where she teaches fiction and scriptwriting. When she isn't writing, drawing, or teaching, she trains her Welsh Cob cross pony in dressage and jumping. FRANK SOOS, a native of Virginia, is the author of Unified Field Theory, which won the 1997 Flannery O'Connor Award for Short Fiction. He is also the author of Unpleasantries: Considerations of Difficult Questions, Bamboo Fly Rod Suite, Early Yet, and Double Moon: Constructions and Conversations with Margo Klass. He is a professor emeritus of English at the University of Alaska in Fairbanks. NANCY ZAFRIS is the author of The People I Know, recipient of the 1989 Flannery O'Connor Award for Short Fiction. She is also the author of two novels, Lucky Strike and The Metal Shredders. Her second collection of short stories, The Home Jar, was named one of the top ten books of 2013 by The Minneapolis Star Tribune. After serving as the fiction editor of the Kenyon Review for nine years, she became the editor of the Flannery O'Connor award series for several years. She has recently finished a new novel. ETHAN LAUGHMAN has worked in both the editorial and marketing departments of the University of Georgia Press. Among the few who have read every Flannery O'Connor Award-winning volume, he has collaborated closely with the series' authors in compiling these new anthologies.


Book Information
ISBN 9780820358390
Author Ethan Laughman
Format Paperback
Page Count 256
Imprint University of Georgia Press
Publisher University of Georgia Press
Weight(grams) 333g