Books by James Thomas
Flash Fiction Forward: 80 Very Short Stories
by James Thomas, Robert Shapard
The eagerly anticipated anthology from the editors who coined the term “flash,” with stories by today’s best fiction writers. After publication of the first Flash Fiction anthology over a decade ago, “flash” became part of the creative writing lexicon for readers, writers, students, and teachers. In this follow-up collection, the editors once again tackle the question: “How short can a story be and truly be a story?” Determined to find the best flashes from America in the twenty-first century, James Thomas and Robert Shapard searched everywhere for stories that were not merely good but memorable. Moving, and certainly unforgettable, this collection includes stories from the best and most popular fiction writers of our time, including Ron Carlson, Robert Coover, Steve Almond, Amy Hempel, A. M. Homes, Grace Paley, and Paul Theroux. In addition, Rick Moody properly defines armoire, Lydia Davis delves into a world of cats, and Dave Eggers explores narrow escapes. Over and over, these stories prove that often less is more.
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New Sudden Fiction: Short-Short Stories from America and Beyond
by James Thomas, Robert Shapard
An all-new volume―students and lovers of literature take note: this is serious writing that's fun to read. Responding to America’s love affair with the short-short, editors Robert Shapard and James Thomas searched thousands of books and magazines to select these sixty stories―each under 2,000 words, each with its own element of surprise, whether traditional, experimental, humorous, moving, or magical. In the process they discovered both new talents and a wealth of celebrated writers, such as Jorge Luis Arzola, Aimee Bender, Teolinda Gersao, Romulus Linney, Yann Martel, Sam Shepard, and Tobias Wolff. Zdravka Evitmova conjures blood drops that cure any disease. Ian Frazier writes public relations for crows. Juan José Milás leads an amnesiac husband to an affair in the candlelit darkness of a cathedral with his wife. These tales told quickly offer pleasures long past their telling.
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Flash Fiction International: Very Short Stories from Around the World
by James Thomas, Robert Shapard, Christopher Merrill
A dazzling new anthology of the very best very short fiction from around the world. What is a flash fiction called in other countries? In Latin America it is a micro, in Denmark kortprosa, in Bulgaria mikro razkaz. These short shorts, usually no more than 750 words, range from linear narratives to the more unusual: stories based on mathematical forms, a paragraph-length novel, a scientific report on volcanic fireflies that proliferate in nightclubs. Flash has always―and everywhere―been a form of experiment, of possibility. A new entry in the lauded Flash and Sudden Fiction anthologies, this collection includes 86 of the most beautiful, provocative, and moving narratives by authors from six continents, including best-selling writer Etgar Keret, Zimbabwean writer Petina Gappah, Korean screenwriter Kim Young-ha, Nobel Prize winner Czeslaw Milosz, and Argentinian “Queen of the Microstory” Ana María Shua, among many others. These brilliantly chosen stories challenge readers to widen their vision and celebrate both the local and the universal.
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New Micro: Exceptionally Short Fiction
by James Thomas, Robert Scotellaro
An addictive new collection of very short stories curated by Flash Fiction editor James Thomas and microfiction writer Robert Scotellaro.
Comprised of 300 words or fewer, microfiction is difficult to write but delightful and absorbing to read. With a foreword from Robert Shapard, coeditor of the Norton flash and sudden fiction anthologies, an afterword by Christopher Merrill, coeditor of Flash Fiction International, an introduction from its venerable editors, and a star-studded table of contents, New Micro is a veritable who’s who of the increasingly popular world of microfiction. Authors include newcomers and established writers alike: Amy Hempel, John Edgar Wideman, Kim Addonizio, Richard Brautigan, Bonnie Jo Campbell, Stuart Dybek, Joyce Carol Oates, and James Tate among them.
With 90 authors and 140 stories, New Micro offers a unique reading experience, a chorus of voices both fresh and familiar, real and surreal but always enlightening―distinctive and exceptional pieces of fiction that pulse and resonate, each with its own story to tell.
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Sudden Fiction Latino: Short-Short Stories from the United States and Latin America
by Ray Gonzalez, James Thomas, Robert Shapard
For readers who love great short-short stories, this bountiful anthology is the best of Latin American and U.S. Latino writers. Following on the success of the Flash Fiction and Sudden Fiction series, Robert Shapard and James Thomas join with Ray Gonzalez in selecting works that each present a complete story in less than 1,500 words. Luisa Valenzuela, one of Latin America’s most lauded writers, provides the introduction. Readers will delight in finding stars such as Junot Díaz, Sandra Cisneros, and Roberto Bolano alongside recognized masters like Gabriel García Márquez, Isabel Allende, and Jorge Luis Borges. They will discover work from Andrea Saenz, Daniel Alarcón, and Alicita Rodriguez, as well as other writers on the rise.
In Julio Ortega’s “Migrations,” a Peruvian writer explores how immigrant speech and ethnic origins are a force of meaning that evolves beyond language. In “Hair,” by Hilma Contreras, a Caribbean pharmacist is driven mad by a young woman’s luxuriant tresses. These stories stretch from gritty reality to the fantastical in a mix that is moving, challenging, humorous, artful, sometimes political, and altogether spectacular.
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Flash Fiction America: 73 Very Short Stories
by James Thomas, Sherrie Flick
A spectacular new anthology of the best short-short fiction from across the United States.
It has been more than thirty years since the term “flash fiction” was first coined, perfectly describing the power in the brevity of these stories, each under 1,000 words. Since then, the form has taken hold in the American imagination. For this latest installment in the popular Flash Fiction series, James Thomas, Sherrie Flick, and John Dufresne have searched far and wide for the most distinctive American voices in short-short fiction. The 73 stories collected here speak to the diversity of the American experience and range from the experimental to the narrative, from the whimsical to the gritty. Featuring fiction from writers both established and new, including Aimee Bender, K-Ming Chang, Bonnie Jo Campbell, Bryan Washington, Robert Scotellaro, and Luis Alberto Urrea, Flash Fiction America is a brilliant collection, radiating creativity and bringing together some of the most compelling and exciting contemporary writers in the United States.
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$16.95
Sudden Fiction: American Short Stories
by James Thomas, Robert Shapard
Here Are 70 of The Very Best Short-Short Stories of Recent Years Including Contributions From Such Contemporary Writers As Raymond Carver, Leonard Michaels and John Updike; A Few Modern Masters As Hemingway and Cheever; and An Assortment of Talented New Young Writers. Sudden Fiction Brilliantly Captures The Tremendous Popularity of This New and Distictly American Form.
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Are Racists Crazy?: How Prejudice, Racism, and Antisemitism Became Markers of Insanity (Biopolitics, 11)
by James Thomas, Sander L. Gilman
The connection and science behind race, racism, and mental illness
In 2012, an interdisciplinary team of scientists at the University of Oxford reported that - based on their clinical experiment - the beta-blocker drug, Propranolol, could reduce implicit racial bias among its users. Shortly after the experiment, an article in Time Magazine cited the study, posing the question: Is racism becoming a mental illness? In Are Racists Crazy? Sander Gilman and James Thomas trace the idea of race and racism as psychopathological categories., from mid-19th century Europe, to contemporary America, up to the aforementioned clinical experiment at the University of Oxford, and ask a slightly different question than that posed by Time: How did racism become a mental illness? Using historical, archival, and content analysis, the authors provide a rich account of how the 19th century ‘Sciences of Man’ - including anthropology, medicine, and biology - used race as a means of defining psychopathology and how assertions about race and madness became embedded within disciplines that deal with mental health and illness.
An illuminating and riveting history of the discourse on racism, antisemitism, and psychopathology, Are Racists Crazy? connects past and present claims about race and racism, showing the dangerous implications of this specious line of thought for today.
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An Introduction to Systematic Reviews
by James Thomas, David Gough, Sandy Oliver
An Introduction to Systematic Reviews provides a short, accessible and technically up-to-date book covering the full breadth of approaches to reviews from statistical meta analysis to meta ethnography. The content is divided into five main sections covering: approaches to reviewing; getting started; gathering and describing research; appraising and synthesizing data; and making use of reviews and models of research use. As systematic reviews become included in many more graduate-level courses this book answers the growing demand for a user-friendly guide.
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Script Analysis for Actors, Directors, and Designers
by James Thomas
Script Analysis for Actors, Directors, and Designers teaches the skills of script analysis using a formalist approach that examines the written part of a play to gauge how the play should be performed and designed. Treatments of both classic and unconventional plays are combined with clear examples, end-of-chapter questions, and stimulating summaries that will allow actors, directors and designers to immediately incorporate the concepts and processes into their theatre production work.
Now thoroughly revised, the fifth edition contains a new section on postmodernism and postdramatic methods of script analysis, along with additional material for designers.
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