Astoria to Zion: Twenty-Six Stories of Risk and Abandon from Ecotone's First Decade

GOLD IPPY (INDEPENDENT PUBLISHER) IN THE ANTHOLOGY CATEGORY

In his introduction to The Best American Short Stories 2008, Salman Rushdie called Ecotone one of a handful of journals on which "the health of the American short story depends." Now at the close of an award-winning first decade, the magazine has established itself as a preeminent venue for original short fiction from both recognized and emerging writers, with more than twenty stories from sixteen issues reprinted or noted in the Best American, New Stories from the South, Pushcart, and PEN/O. Henry series.

With the publication of this anthology, Lookout Books makes a permanent home for the vital work of Ecotoneregular contributors Steve Almond, Rick Bass, Edith Pearlman, Ron Rash, Bill Roorbach, and Brad Watson, along with rising talents Lauren Groff, Ben Stroud, and Kevin Wilson, among others. In keeping with the magazine's mission to reimagine place, the collection explores transitional zones, the spaces where we are most threatened and alive. From a city fallen silent to a doomed nineteenth-century ship, from a startling birth in the woods to the bog burial of an adored archaeologist, from the loop of hair in a drowned trader's locket to the sanctity of pointy boots in a war zone, these stories make beautiful noise of our most fundamental human longings.

Ben Fountain was born in Chapel Hill and grew up in the tobacco country of eastern North Carolina. A former practicing attorney, he is the author of Brief Encounters with Che Guevara, which won the PEN/Hemingway Award and the Barnes & Noble Discover Award for Fiction, and the novel Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk, winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award and a finalist for the National Book Award. Billy Lynn was adapted into a feature film directed by three-time Oscar winner Ang Lee, and his work has been translated into over twenty languages. His book of essays, Beautiful Country Burn Again: Democracy, Rebellion, and Revolution, is based on his award-winning reportage for The Guardian on the 2016 U.S. presidential election. He lives in Dallas, Texas with his wife, Sharon Fountain.

Lauren Groff is the New York Times bestselling author of three novels, The Monsters of Templeton, Arcadia, and Fates and Furies, and the short story collections Florida and Delicate Edible Birds. She has been a finalist for the National Book Award, the National Book Critics Circle Award, the Kirkus Prize, and the LA Times Book Prize. Her work has been featured in the New Yorker, along with five Best American Short Stories anthologies, and she was named one of Granta's 2017 Best Young American Novelists. In 2018, she received a Guggenheim fellowship in Fiction. Lauren lives in Gainesville, Florida, with her husband and sons.

Steve Almond is the author of eight books of fiction and nonfiction, including the New York Times Bestsellers Candyfreak and Against Football. His most recent story collection is God Bless America. His stories have been anthologized widely, in The Best American Short Stories, The Pushcart Prize, Best American Erotica, and Best American Mysteries series. His essays and reviews have appeared in the New York Times Magazine, the Boston Globe, the Washington Post, and elsewhere. He teaches at the Nieman Fellowship for Journalism at Harvard, and hosts the New York Times podcast "Dear Sugars" with fellow writer Cheryl Strayed.

Rick Bass, a National Book Critics Circle Award finalist for his memoir Why I Came West, was born and raised in Texas, worked as a petroleum geologist in Mississippi, and has lived in Montana's Yaak Valley for almost three decades. His short fiction, which has appeared in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, Esquire, and the Paris Review, as well as numerous times in Best American Short Stories, has earned him multiple O. Henry Awards and Pushcart Prizes as well as NEA and Guggenheim fellowships.

Rebecca Makkai is the Chicago-based author of the novels The Great Believers, The Hundred-Year House, and The Borrower, as well as the short story collection Music for Wartime. Her short fiction won a 2017 Pushcart Prize, and was chosen for The Best American Short Stories for four consecutive years (2008-2011). The recipient of a 2014 NEA fellowship, Makkai is on the MFA faculties of Sierra Nevada College and Northwestern University, and she is the Artistic Director of StoryStudio Chicago.