Telling Stories: An Anthology for Writers

"Every book, every story, every sentence we read is a part of our preparation for our own writing," suggests Joyce Carol Oates in her introduction to Telling Stories, "so it's wise to choose our reading carefully." Easily said. But apart from sticking to the classics and canceling that subscription to People magazine, how does one go about choosing wisely? One way is to find a reliable anthologist, and in Oates we have just that. Prolific a writer as she is, Oates also teaches creative writing at Princeton, and she uses many of the stories, prose pieces, and poems collected in Telling Stories as material for her writing workshops. Among the nearly 100 authors included in the volume are Anton Chekhov and Lydia Davis, Ovid and Angela Carter, H. P. Lovecraft and Stephen King, Gish Jen and Thom Jones. A rich stew it is indeed, and a terrific jumping-off place for those writers who wish, as Oates recommends, "to read widely, to read with enthusiasm, to read for pleasure, to read with an eye for another's craft." --Jane Steinberg