Alice Munro has devoted her entire career to the short story form in her fourteen collections, having won the Nobel Prize in Literature “as master of the contemporary short story”. This edited volume investigates her art as a storyteller, the processes she performs on the contemporary short story genre in her creative anatomical theatre. Divided into five topical sections, it is a collection of scholarly chapters which offer textual insights into a single story, compare two or more texts, or casts a more panoramic view on Munro’s literary production, embracing stories from her first collection Dance of the Happy Shades to her last published Dear Life. Through different critical approaches that range from post-structuralism to cultural studies, from linguistics and rhetorical analyses to translation studies, the authors insist on the concept that no fixed patterns prevail in her short stories, as Munro has constantly developed, challenged, and revised existing modes of generic configuration, while discussing the fluidity, the elusiveness, the indeterminacy, the ambiguity of her superb writing.

Taking its cue from medieval bestiaries, this alphabet book is composed of 63 entries ranging from ADDER to WOLFHOUNDS, with each entry juxtaposing an image, an excerpt from a story by Alice Munro, and a commentary. The images are reproduced from original medieval illuminations, the excerpts feature an animal, or a human being depicted through animal comparison, and the commentaries highlight the way Munro suggests relationality between the human and the non-human. Munro troubles the boundaries between good and evil as she troubles the boundaries between human and non-human. Through the mask of the animal, she effects a release from strict morality and proposes an uncommon and undomesticated representation of human life, revolving on simultaneous transcendence and derision. The volume will appeal to Munro scholars and to lovers of Alice Munro alike because it solves some of the enigmas set by her stories but suggests other riddles and more secrets.

What in terms of Alice Munro’s creative artistry and creative power allowed her to become the first and only short story writer, the first and only Canadian, and just the thirteenth woman in history to win the Nobel Prize in Literature? And exactly when during Munro’s career did her artistry and power advance to ensure that she would earn such world-wide renown? The answers lie in studying the boldly innovative yet greatly under-examined group of her four mid-career breakthrough books. Our volume therefore provides a carefully orchestrated analysis of Munro’s subtle yet potent handling of form, technique and style both within individual stories and across these special collections. Reading Alice Munro’s Breakthrough Books: A Suite in Four Voices not only addresses a significant vacancy in Munro criticism – and, by extension, in all short story criticism – but, equally importantly, offers an exciting new model for how criticism can be collectively written.

Secrecy and Community in 21st-Century Fiction examines the relation between secrecy and community in a diverse and international range of contemporary fictional works in English. In its concern with what is called 'communities of secrecy', it is fundamentally indebted to the thought of Jacques Derrida, Jean-Luc Nancy and Maurice Blanchot, who have pointed to the fallacies and dangers of identitarian and exclusionary communities, arguing for forms of being-in-common characterized by non-belonging, singularity and otherness. Also drawing on the work of J. Hillis Miller, Derek Attridge, Nicholas Royle, Matei Calinescu, Frank Kermode and George Simmel, among others, this volume analyses the centrality of secrets in the construction of literary form, narrative sequence and meaning, together with their foundational role in our private and interpersonal lives and the public and political realms. In doing so, it engages with the Derridean ethico-political value of secrecy and Derrida's conception of literature as the exemplary site for the operation of the unconditional secret.

While scholars have been studying the short story cycle for some time now, this book discusses a form that has never before been identified and named, let alone analyzed: the mini-cycle. A mini-cycle is a short story cycle made up, in most cases, of only two or three stories. This study looks at mini-cycles spanning the period from Anton Chekhov’s "little trilogy" (1898) to the "Alphinland" stories in Margaret Atwood’s Stone Mattress (2014), including texts by such authors as Stephen Leacock, Alice Munro, Robert Olen Butler, and Clark Blaise. Consideration is also given to marginal examples, like Sherwood Anderson’s "Godliness—A Tale in Four Parts" (1919), which can be seen as one story or four distinct texts unified under one title, and to what is called the "exploded" mini-cycle: one whose component stories are published with intervening stories between them rather than consecutively. For each mini-cycle, the analysis is based on close reading of both the linking elements—character, imagery, symbolism, and so forth—and the rhetorical and aesthetic effects of the mini-cycle’s being made up of distinct stories rather than constructed as one long narrative.

This is the first study of Thomas Mann's landmark German modernist novel Der Zauberberg (The Magic Mountain, 1924) that takes as its starting point the interest in Mann's book shown by non-academic readers. It is also a case study in a cluster of issues central to the interrelated fields of transnational German studies, global modernism studies, comparative literature, and reception theory: it addresses the global circulation of German modernism, popular afterlives of a canonical work, access to cultural participation, relationship between so-called 'high-brow' and 'low-brow' culture, and the limitations of traditional academic reading practices. The study intervenes in these discussions by developing a critical practice termed 'closer reading' and positioning it within the framework of world literature studies. Mann's Magic Mountain centres around nine comparative readings of five novels, three films, and one short story conceived as responses to The Magic Mountain. These works provide access to distinct readings of Mann's text on three levels: they function as records of their authors' reading of Mann, provide insights into broader culturally and historically specific interpretations of the novel, and feature portrayals of fictional readers of The Magic Mountain. These nine case studies are contextualized, complemented, enhanced, and expanded through references to hundreds of other diverse sources that testify to a lively engagement with The Magic Mountain outside of academic scholarship, including journalistic reviews, discussions on internet fora and blogs, personal essays and memoirs, Mann's fan mail and his replies to it, publishing advertisements, and marketing brochures from Davos, where the novel is set.

This volume draws together contributions containing original research on a number of linguistic and semiotic understandings of gender in the context of current debates about gender non-conforming people and diverse ways of ‘doing’ masculinities. It contests the constraints, stereotypes, and prejudices concerning gender nonconformity by sparking academic inquiry, possibly leading to social change. The book explores various gender non-conforming tropes as they apply either to same-sex related desires, identities, and practices or to other dimensions of gender non-normative experiences, such as weak or socially-perceived as unacceptable representations of manliness. The volume demonstrates that language matters in the everyday experience of gender diversity beyond traditional gender binarism. By modelling some of the approaches that are now being explored in linguistic and gender studies and by addressing language use over a range of diamesic, diastratic and diatopic contexts, all contributors here discuss cogent issues in language and gender.

The Best Resource for Getting Your Fiction Published! The 2015 Novel & Short Story Writer's Market is the only resource you'll need to get your short stories, novellas, and novels published. As with past editions, Novel & Short Story Writer's Market offers hundreds of listings for book publishers, literary agents, fiction publications, contests, and more. Each listing includes contact information, submission guidelines, and other important tips. New to this year's edition: Gain access to the exclusive webinar "Blockbuster Fiction: Exploring Emotional High Points in Popular Films" from best-selling author Cheryl St. John. This 45-minute webinar explores the ten most popular films of 2013--including Frozen, The Hunger Games: Catching Fire, The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug, and more--to show you how to create intense, emotional, engrossing moments in your fiction. When you make your readers care about your characters and your story, you'll evoke excitement, indignation, fear, anxiety, tears, and laughter--and keep them hooked from start to finish. You'll also find articles and interviews on all aspects of the writing life, from in-depth lessons on craft and technique to helpful advice on getting published and marketing your work. The 2015 Novel & Short Story Writer's Market offers everything a fiction writer needs to achieve publishing success, including articles and essays like these: • J.T. Ellison, New York Times best-selling author, reveals how to capture â€" and keep â€" reader interest. • Ransom Riggs, mega-popular YA novelist, shares advice on writing out-of-the-ordinary fiction. • Chuck Wendig, hybrid author extraordinaire, talks about the pros and cons of traditional and self-publishing. You'll also receive: • A free digital download of Writer's Yearbook featuring the 100 Best Markets "If you're looking for the best resource for connecting with publishers who are hungry for your fiction, you've found it. Ten novels ago I got my start as an author using Writer's Market guides." -Steven James, writing instructor and best-selling author of The King and Story Trumps Structure "If you can't go to every literary cocktail party in New York, get this book. It's an instant network." -Elizabeth Sims, best-selling author of You've Got a Book in You

"Here is a singular story of survival, an earthly miracle wrought by family devotion, gardens, horses, guts. A compelling read."—Carolyn Heilbrun In July 1998, when Maxine Kumin's horse bolted at a carriage-driving clinic, she was not expected to live. Yet, less than a year later, her progress pronounced a miracle by her doctors, she was at work on this journal of her astonishing recovery. She tells of her time "inside the halo," the near-medieval device that kept her head immobile during weeks of intensive care and rehabilitation, of the lasting "rehab" friendships, and of the loving family who always believed she would heal. "[S]he resonates wisdom while announcing a triumph of body and soul."—Anne Roiphe, New York Times Book Review "Maxine Kumin brings the sensitivity and imagination of a poet to her extraordinary ordeal."—Richard Selzer, author of Mortal Lessons: Notes on the Art of Surgery "From a singular experience she has created a lesson that is universal, which, it seems to me, is the essence of being a poet."—Abraham Verghese, author of The Tennis Partner

Alice Munro’s Miraculous Art is a collection of sixteen original essays on Nobel laureate Alice Munro’s writings. The volume covers the entirety of Munro’s career, from the first stories she published in the early 1950s as an undergraduate at the University of Western Ontario to her final books. It offers an enlightening range of approaches and interpretive strategies, and provides many new perspectives, reconsidered positions and analyses that will enhance the reading, teaching, and appreciation of Munro’s remarkable—indeed miraculous—work. Following the editors’ introduction—which surveys Munro’s recurrent themes, explains the design of the book, and summarizes each contribution—Munro biographer Robert Thacker contributes a substantial bio-critical introduction to her career. The book is then divided into three sections, focusing on Munro’s characteristic forms, themes, and most notable literary effects.