The best short stories as selected from the first quarter-century of the celebrated The Pushcart Prize series.

Since 1976, The Pushcart Prize has been "the single best measure of the state of affairs in American literature today," according to the New York Times Book Review. Many of today's celebrated short story authors received their first national recognition in the Pushcart Prize; over the years the series has tracked the development of the form, encompassing all its enthusiasms from traditional to experimental in an unsurpassed eclectic gathering. Over 500 stories from all the editions were considered for this memorable and enduring volume, and the final selections include some of the major writers of our time, almost all of them discovered in The Pushcart Prize at the start of their vocations. The list includes Raymond Carver, John Irving, David Kranes, Lynne Sharon Schwartz, Jayne Anne Phillips, Cynthia Ozick, Janet Peery, Liza Wieland, Susan Minot, Mona Simpson, Tim O'Brien, Rick Bass, Richard Ford, Alistair MacLeod, Padgett Powell, Josip Novakovich, Ha Jin, Bobbie Ann Mason, Rick Moody, and many more.