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Ann Beattie

(b.1947)

Ann Beattie has been included in four O. Henry Award Collections and in John Updike's Best American Short Stories of the Century. In 2000, she received the PEN/Malamud Award for achievement in the short story form. In 2005, she received the Rea Award for the Short Story. She and her husband, Lincoln Perry, live in Key West, Florida, and Charlottesville, Virginia, where she is Edgar Allan Poe Professor of Literature and Creative Writing at the University of Virginia.

Awards: PEN (2000)

Genres: Literary Fiction

Novels

   Chilly Scenes of Winter (1976)
     aka Head Over Heels
   Falling in Place (1980)
   Love Always (1985)
   Picturing Will (1990)
   Another You (1995)
   My Life, Starring Dara Falcon (1997)
   The Doctor's House (2002)
   A Wonderful Stroke of Luck (2019)

Collections

   Distortions (1976)
   Secrets and Surprises (1978)
   The Burning House (1982)
   Where You'll Find Me (1986)
   What Was Mine (1991)
   Park City (1998)
   Perfect Recall (2001)
   Follies (2005)
   The New Yorker Stories (2010)
   The State We're In (2015)
   The Accomplished Guest (2017)
   Onlookers (2023)

Novellas and Short Stories

   Jacklighting (1981)
   Spectacles (1985)
   The Pleasures of Perplexity (2005)
   Walks with Men (2010)
   Playing to the Bear (2012)
   Vermont (2015)

Anthologies edited

American Fiction '87 (1987)

Series contributed to

Best American Short Stories
The Best American Short Stories 1987 (1987) (with Shannon Ravenel)

Non fiction show

Books containing stories by Ann Beattie

Pets (2020)
edited by
Jordan Castro

Why I Like This Story (2019)
edited by
Jackson R Bryer

The Best American Short Stories 2014 (2014)
(Best American Short Stories)
edited by
Jennifer Egan

More books

Awards

2000 PEN/Malamud Award

Ann Beattie recommends

The Last Sweet Taste (2026)
Craig Nova
"Craig Nova is one of our best writers. His career has been a high-wire act he's daringly situated right at eye level. Who couldn't identify with his characters, always moving forward, misstepping, reversing course, only to find that whatever tenuous safe shore there was no longer exists. This novel is sometimes sadly absurd or funny, and also unexpectedly tender. The extremes of the terrain are real and absolute, the people who occupy that space not entirely defeated, still yearning. Nobody sees America the way Craig Nova does, but once we've travelled through his territory, we won't forget it."

A Different Kind of Tension (2025)
Jonathan Lethem
"How fortunate to have new and collected stories, because while amazing individually, cumulatively the effect is stunning. That last story: Oh! Lethem creates characters who finger the worry beads in their pockets unseen, conjuring those same hard realities into stepping stones to move the story forward. I read the stories as journeys with significant digressions. You can imagine the writer pointing his magic wand in many directions, but the stories' sense of weird inevitability can't be anticipated; up pop our cultural dreams or nightmares, our off-kilter relationships, our personal sadnesses. Nobody does it better."

Save Me, Stranger (2025)
Erika Krouse
"I really enjoyed this book. Some of its remarkable power is that the stories alternate between embodying epiphanies and valedictions-sometimes a quick goodbye, but always with an authenticity that convinces the longer it lingers. They'll stay in your mind."

Silver Alert (2023)
Lee Smith
"There are many ways to read Lee Smith's excellent new novel Silver Alert, but I view it as the toll old age has taken on her characters, with all its indignities and absurdities, as well as a wry view of America itself. Staged in iconic Key West, the improviser's Paradise, it's an implied prayer for our expressing kindness in gestures large and small."

Lungfish (2022)
Meghan Gilliss
"Lungfish offers up journeys physical and psychic, so it's fitting that it takes place on an island, which is a transitional place. It's about families, past and present, and the lifelines they provide, along with their often tangled confusions. The revelations about the natural world are wonderful, and give a sense of what endures."

The Partition (2022)
Don Lee
"I'm a huge Don Lee fan. He's smart, wry, funny. There's also his humane view of humans, and the startling fairness with which he provides everyone's point of view. I admire the graceful way his stories unfold, as if their pleats are intrinsic, once we stop to notice desire's contradictions, and life's wrinkles."

Vera (2021)
Carol Edgarian
"Though it has a panoramic sweep, Carol Edgarian’s Vera is a novel of great immediacy and heart. From the early scene at the opera, to its shocking real-world correlative, this novel exists in the zone – let’s call it the world. In so many ways, it sings."

Foregone (2021)
Russell Banks
"Russell Banks, as cinematographer, is known to move in close. Foregone focuses his sharp eye on the feints and fictions amid life's 'facts,' as he reveals his fascinatingly fallible character, Fife, whose personal life has been contextualized by history. As we zig-zag through the character's past and present, it becomes apparent that the writer is simultaneously, and subtly, demonstrating the act of writing fiction. Fife is aptly named; he's an instrument piercing the soundtrack we call life, as the drummer marches on."

Daphne (2018)
Will Boast
"[Boast] can really write."

The World of Tomorrow (2015)
Brendan Mathews
"What a book! The World of Tomorrow is a panoramic tour-de-force, a huge undertaking peopled with convincing characters and animated by a persuasive historical accuracy."

The Canyon (2015)
Stanley Crawford
"A wonderful book, elegantly written."

Euphoria (2014)
Lily King
"Writers are childlike in their enthusiasm about other writers' good work. They're thinking: How'd they ever think of that? That's amazing/beautifully written/true! Imagine all the effort that went into pulling this off. Could I do something this original/surprising/moving? I'm always happy to read Lily King, and I particularly enjoyed reading Euphoria."

Misfit (2012)
Adam Braver
"Amazing... a book about identity, privacy, and intimacy that both exposes and conceals its subject - Marilyn Monroe."

Exiles (2009)
Elliot Krieger
"Exiles is filled with suspense. . . . It's a fascinating look at a place during a particular time, but the intrigue transcends the locale. The ending is riveting and insidious. Which I mean as a compliment."

Taking Care (1982)
Joy Williams
"Hypnotic... one of our most remarkable storytellers."

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