Stories Wanting Only to Be Heard

Founded at the University of Georgia in 1947 and published there ever since, The Georgia Review has become one of America’s most highly regarded journals of arts and letters. Never stuffy and never shallow, The Georgia Review seeks a broad audience of intellectually open and curious readers—and strives to give those readers rich content that invites and sustains repeated attention and consideration. Pulitzer Prize winners and never-before-published writers are equals during the journal’s manuscript evaluation process, whose goal is to identify and print stories, poems, and essays that promise to be of lasting merit.

The year 2012 marks the sixty-fifth anniversary of The Georgia Review, and Stories Wanting Only to Be Heard will acknowledge that milestone by presenting a selection of the remarkable short fiction published across the decades. The collection includes the work of well-known writers, many of whom were not yet so well known when first selected for publication by The Georgia Review, and also highlights compelling work from writers whose names may not be as familiar but whose stories are equally compelling and memorable.

The stories collected here—each one vivid, distinctive, and worthwhile to read—stand as testament to the significance of The Georgia Review’s decades of work to identify and promote writing of exceptional quality.

Publication of this book was made possible, in part, by the President’s Venture Fund through generous gifts of the University of Georgia Partners.

“"When a journal can bring together work originally published in its pages by such authors as diverse as Mary Hood and Harry Crews, Pam Durban and T. C. Boyle, Jesse Stuart and Ernest J. Gaines, John Edgar Wideman and Jack Driscoll, we readers out here are blessed beyond measure. This is a worthy book. Period."-Bret Lott, author of Ancient Highway”

Stories Wanting Only to Be Heard is an anthology of twenty-eight stories that must be read, from the backcountry blues of Jesse Stuart and Harry Crews to the intellectual sophistication of Fred Pfeil and Fred Chappell, from Pam Durban’s terrific “This Heat” to Donald Hall’s blistering “The World Is a Bed,” from Jim Heynen’s charming “Stories about the Boys” to Jack Driscoll’s devastating story about a boy named Judge. In my experience, no other literary publication could shape an anthology as wide in its range of subjects or as varied in its modes of telling. This is not only an excellent anthology but an exciting one.

When a journal can bring together work originally published in its pages by such authors as diverse as Mary Hood and Harry Crews, Pam Durban and T. C. Boyle, Jesse Stuart and Ernest J. Gaines, John Edgar Wideman and Jack Driscoll, we readers out here are blessed beyond measure. This is a worthy book. Period.

Lovers of short fiction, rejoice: this is a volume to be celebrated. In an array of styles, across sixty-five years, these stories speak urgently—often with wit, sometimes tragically—about the turns our lives take, the unexpected heartbreak, the astonishing triumph. Voices sing out in these pages, a chorale that expresses the steady, illuminating intelligence of this work and the editors who selected it. Maybe, as the title says, the stories here want only to be heard. Once heard, though, they will be remembered. And passed on. And cherished.

The list of authors featured here . . . make this a veritable textbook for aspiring writers and a joy for readers. . . . There is much to be proud of in Stories Wanting Only to Be Heard, and Corey et al. have done a spectacular job of picking through the treasure trove of material from the vast archives of The Georgia Review. It's an enviable job, and one done very well. For those who have given up on fiction, this anthology will bring you back into the fold.

[T]he stories in this collection are of the highest quality. . . .They are memorable and gratifying—just what one would expect from the Georgia Review.

STEPHEN COREY is editor of the Georgia Review and the author of nine collections of poems, most recently There Is No Finished World. DOUGLAS CARLSON is associate prose editor of The Georgia Review. He is the author of Roger Tony Peterson: A Biography, and his work has been anthologized in At the Edge and When We Say We're Home. He has served on the Faculty Editorial Board for UGA Press and has also served advisory roles for Ascent magazine, White Wine Press, and New Rivers Press. HARRY CREWS (1935–2012) is the author of eighteen novels, including The Mulching of America, The Knockout Artist, and A Feast of Snakes. He was a professor at the University of Florida. PAM DURBAN is the author of The Laughing Place, which won the 1994 Townsend Prize for Fiction. In addition, Durban is the recipient of the 1988 Whiting Writer's Award and the 1984 Rinehart Award in Fiction. Her stories, which have appeared in such publications as Tri-Quarterly, Crazyhorse, and the Georgia Review, have been widely anthologized. She teaches at Georgia State University. BARRY LOPEZ is the author of many books of fiction and nonfiction, including Arctic Dreams, for which he won the National Book Award. He lives in Oregon. DAVID INGLE is an Instructor in the Department of English at the University of Georgia and also works as a freelance book editor.

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