The Best American Short Stories 1997, a volume in The Best American Short Stories series, was edited by Katrina Kennison and by guest editor E. Annie Proulx.Kennison, Katrina and Proulx, Annie (editors), The Best American Short Stories 1997, New York, 1997.The Best in the Truest Sense of the World, Chicago Tribune, Dec 22, 1997 This was the first and only year that the stories were formally grouped by category, rather than alphabetically.
Short stories included
Category: Manners and Right Behavior
Author Story SourceHa Jin "Saboteur" The Antioch ReviewRobert Stone "Under the Pitons" EsquireCarolyn Cooke "Bob Darling" The Paris ReviewJonathan Franzen "Chez Lambert" The Paris Review
Category: Identifying the Stranger
Author Story SourceMichelle Cliff "Transactions" TriQuarterlyRichard Bausch "Nobody in Hollywood" The New YorkerCynthia Ozick "Save My Child!" The New YorkerKaren E. Bender "Eternal Love" GrantaLeonard Michaels "A Girl with a Monkey" Partisan ReviewLydia Davis "St. Martin" Grand Street Category: Perceived Social Values
Author Story SourceJunot Díaz "Fiesta, 1980" StoryDonald Hall "From Willow Temple" The Atlantic MonthlyT. Coraghessan Boyle "Killing Babies" The New YorkerClyde Edgerton "Send Me to the Electric Chair" The Oxford AmericanJune Spence "Missing Women" The Southern ReviewJeffrey Eugenides "Air Mail" The Yale ReviewPam Durban "Soon" The Southern Review
Category: Rites of Passage
Author Story SourceMichael Byers "Shipmates Down Under" American Short FictionTobias Wolff "Powder" Fish StoriesAlyson Hagy "Search Bay" PloughsharesTim Gautreaux "Little Frogs in a Ditch" Gentlemen's Quarterly
References