Louisiana Stories — Ben Forkner

"An illuminating, and at the same time, thoroughly entertaining compilation, Louisiana Stories is enhanced by an introductory essay that is a contribution not only to the literary history of the state but also of the South." Lewis P. Simpson, former professor of English at Louisiana State University and editor of The Southern Review.

Southern writers have always excelled in the short story form. Eudora Welty, Flannery O'Connor, and Peter Taylor are the yardsticks by which short story writers are judged not only within the realm of Southern literature but also within that of American literature. By compiling an impressive array of stories by many of the Deep South's finest writers, anthologist Ben Forkner demonstrates how Louisianans in particular have influenced the development of the short story. Forkner writes in his insightful introductory essay: "These same native Louisiana stories manage to announce the central themes of modern Southern fiction more emphatically, and earlier, than the writing of any other single Southern region."Included in this compilation are works by Henry Clay Lewis, George Washington Cable, Lafcadio Hearn, Grace King, Kate Chopin, William Faulkner, Lyle Saxon, Arna Bontemps, Zora Neale Hurston, E.P. O'Donnell, Shirley Ann Grau, Ernest Gaines, Andre Dubus, James Lee Burke, Robb Forman Dew, and John William Corrington.Ben Forkner is the director of the English department at the University of Angers in France where he teaches American and Irish literature. A graduate of Stetson University in Florida, he received his M.A. and Ph.D. from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He has co-edited three anthologies of Southern literature, Stories of the Modern South , AModern Southern Reader, and Stories of the Old South .