“Widely regarded as the nation’s most prestigious award for short fiction.”—
The Atlantic Monthly
The O. Henry Prize Stories 1986
collects 19 of the best short stories of the year, selected from thousands published in literary magazines. The 1986 winning story is Alice Walker’s “Kindred Spirits,” which profiles a young African-American woman after her divorce from her white husband. A Special Award for Continuing Achievement is given to Joyce Carol Oates for “Master Race” that narrates a shocking of a sexual assault in Germany. Other stories include:
Stuart Dybek “Pet Milk”
Greg Johnson “Crazy Ladies”
John L’Heureux “The Comedian”
Joyce R. Kornblatt “Offerings”
Ward Just “The Costa Brava, 1959”
Peter Meinke “Uncle George and Uncle Stefan”
Bobbie Anne Mason “Big Bertha Stories”
Merrill Joan Gerber “‘I Don’t Believe This’”
Gordon Lish “Resurrection”
Peter Cameron “Excerpts from Swan Lake”
Alice Adams “Molly’s Dog”
Deborah Eisenberg “Transaction in a Foreign Currency”
Anthony DiFranco “The Garden of Redemption”
Jeanne Wilmot “Dirt Angel”
Elizabeth Spencer “The Cousins”
Irvin Faust “The Year of the Hot Jock”
Stephanie Vaughn “Kid MacArthur”