It's our most ambitious fiction issue ever. The summer 2009 number contains nine short stories, more than we've ever published at once, including work by Marlin Barton, John J. Clayton, Giles Fowler, Mairi Macinnes, Nancy Huddleston Packer, and Gladys Swan, along with the Sewanee Review's newest contributors, Brooks Wright, Jacob White and Jean Ross Justice.
The stuff in him that for some people turns to love he couldn't let out, or in: it just kind of abscessed around his heart. —Jacob White, "Night Miles"
In the spirit of great fiction, David Heddendorf, Sanford Pinsker, Bruce Allen, and Richard Stern weigh in on Updike, Robert Buffington revaluates Conrad, and Warner Berthoff compares translations of Kafka's final work.
In Updike I recognized the individual's baffled search for God, the stubborn clinging to faith, the persistent doubts and carnal thoughts of the average believer. Sin abounded. Epiphanies were few. This was a fictional world I could believe in. —David Heddendorf, "The Pennsylvanian"
Add to that our full complement of short reviews on Lionel Trilling, Nick Hornby, and our own Gladys Swan among others, and the summer fiction issue shapes up to be another landmark publication.
