Award-winning short story writer Ann Beattie returns with a brilliant collection of linked stories set in Charlottesville, Virginia, in a moment of unrest. Onlookers is an astute new story collection about people living in the same Southern town whose lives intersect in surprising ways. Peaceful Charlottesville, Virginia, drew national attention when white nationalists held a rally there in 2017, a horrific event whose repercussions are still felt today. Confederate monuments such as General Robert E. Lee atop his horse were then still standing. The statues are a constant presence and a metaphoric refrain throughout this collection, though they represent different things to different characters. Some landmarks may have faded from consciousness but provoke fresh outrage when viewed through newly opened eyes. In "Nearby," an elderly man and his younger wife watch from their penthouse as protestors gather to oppose the once "heroic" explorers Lewis and Clark depicted towering over their native guide, Sacagawea. A lawyer in "In the Great Southern Tradition" deals with a crisis on Richmond's Monument Avenue, while his sister and nephew plant tulip bulbs at her stately home. These are stories of unexpected relationships and affiliations that affirm the value of friendship, even when it requires difficult compromises or unexpected risks. Beattie involves the reader in questions about the nature of community, as the characters grapple with complicated inheritances that are both historical and personal and the realities of their lives interact uneasily with the past.

When Ann Beattie began publishing short stories in "The New Yorker "in the mid-seventies, she emerged with a voice so original, and so uncannily precise and prescient in its assessment of her characters' drift and narcissism, that she was instantly celebrated as a voice of her generation. Her name became an adjective: "Beattiesque." Subtle, wry, and unnerving, she is a master observer of the unraveling of the American family, and also of the myriad small occurrences and affinities that unite us. Her characters, over nearly four decades, have moved from lives of fickle desire to the burdens and inhibitions of adulthood and on to failed aspirations, sloppy divorces, and sometimes enlightenment, even grace.
Each Beattie story, says Margaret Atwood, is "like a fresh bulletin from the front: we snatch it up, eager to know what's happening out there on the edge of that shifting and dubious no-man's-land known as interpersonal relations." With an unparalleled gift for dialogue and laser wit, she delivers flash reports on the cultural landscape of her time. "Ann Beattie: The New Yorker Stories "is the perfect initiation for readers new to this iconic American writer and a glorious return for those who have known and loved her work for decades.

Presents essays by leading short-story writers on their favorite American short stories and why they like them. It will send readers to the library or bookstore to read - or re-read - the stories selected. On the assumption that John Updike was correct when he asserted, in a 1978 letter to Joyce Carol Oates, that "Nobody can read like a writer," Why I Like This Story presents brief essays by forty-eight leading American writers on their favorite American short stories, explaining why they like them. The essays, which are personal, not scholarly, not only tell us much about the story selected, they also tell us a good deal about the author of the essay, about what elements of fiction he or she values. Among the writers whose stories are discussed are such American masters as James, Melville, Hemingway, O'Connor, Fitzgerald, Porter, Carver, Wright, Updike, Bellow, Salinger,Malamud, and Welty; but the book also includes pieces on stories by canonical but lesser-known practitioners such as Andre Dubus, Ellen Glasgow, Kay Boyle, Delmore Schwartz, George Garrett, Elizabeth Tallent, William Goyen, Jerome Weidman, Peter Matthiessen, Grace Paley, William H. Gass, and Jamaica Kincaid, and relative newcomers such as Lorrie Moore, Kirstin Valdez Quade, Phil Klay, Viet Thanh Nguyen, and Edward P. Jones. Why I Like This Story will send readers to the library or bookstore to read or re-read the stories selected. Among the contributors to the book are Julia Alvarez, Andrea Barrett, Richard Bausch, Ann Beattie, Andre Dubus, George Garrett, William H. Gass, Julia Glass, Doris Grumbach, Jane Hamilton, Jill McCorkle, Alice McDermott, Clarence Major, Howard Norman, Annie Proulx, Joan Silber, Elizabeth Spencer, and Mako Yoshikawa. Editor Jackson R. Bryer is Professor Emeritus of English at the University of Maryland.

Lincoln Perry is justly celebrated for his murals and edgy narrative figure paintings, with their saturated palette and multifaceted architectural compositions--Poussin refracted through de Chirico. This beautiful new book showcases his images of Charlottesville, Virginia--many of them multipanel compositions featuring the University of Virginia and its environs--accompanied by an essay and interview by his wife, the writer Ann Beattie.

Perry's mural The Student's Progress, which depicts a woman's education and social experience from matriculation through graduation, is familiar to U.Va. students, faculty, and visitors, but Perry has been painting Charlottesville subjects on and off since 1985, when he first moved to town. From his early explorations of the complex relationships between professors and students, played out against the backdrop of Jefferson's Lawn, through his intriguing depictions of the city's domestic interiors, buildings, and streets, Perry illuminates a different side of a place widely appreciated for its history and natural beauty.

Charlottesville, writes Beattie, "both disturbs and calls to Perry] it's a paradoxically comfortable and uncomfortable not-quite-home he has been drawn to many times for reasons he can't easily articulate.... I think that Lincoln likes the town's quirkiness and its lack of uniformity. It's also a place that allows him to practice the x-ray vision so many visual people have for underpinnings: the contradictions that can be drawn upon and aesthetically dramatized.... The place sparks his imagination, and with his paintbrush, he sparks it, charging the air with a bit of unexpected--but very recognizable--light."

Together, Perry and Beattie give us a view of Charlottesville, of place and artistic production, that carries with it the warmth of recognition and the thrill of discovery.

Publication made possible by generous support from the W. L. Lyons Brown Jr. Charitable Foundation

"Earnest, amusing, and contemplative....though Beattie is known for her fiction, her nonfiction has just as much to offer."-Publishers Weekly "Shimmering prose and critical acumen on display in an eclectic collection."-Kirkus Reviews As deeply rewarding as her fiction, a selection of Ann Beattie's essays, chosen and introduced by the author. From appreciations of writers, photographers, and other artists, to notes on the craft of writing itself, this is a wide-ranging, and always penetrating collection of writing never before published in book form. Ann Beattie, a master storyteller, has been delighting readers since the publication of her short stories in the 1970s and her first novel, Chilly Scenes of Winter. But as her literary acclaim grew and she was hailed "the voice of her generation," Ms. Beattie was also moonlighting as a nonfiction writer. As she writes in her introduction to this collection, "Nonfiction always gave me a thrill, even if it provided only an illusion of freedom. Freedom and flexibility-for me, those are the conditions under which imagination sparks." These penetrating essays are stories unto themselves, closely observed appreciations of life and art. The reader travels with Ms. Beattie to Cedar Rapids, Iowa to learn about the legacy of the painter, Grant Wood, and his iconic painting American Gothic; to the famed University of Virginia campus with her husband, the painter Lincoln Perry; to Key West, Florida for New Years with writer and translator, Harry Mathews; to a roadside near Boston in a broken-down car with the wheelchair-bound writer Andre Dubus. There are explorations of novels, short stories, paintings, and photographs by artists ranging from Alice Munro to Elmore Leonard, from Sally Mann to John Loengard. Whatever the subject, Ms. Beattie brings penetrating insight into literature and art that's both familiar and unfamiliar-as she writes, "This, I think, is what artists want to do: find a way to lure the reader or viewer into an alternate realm, to overcome the audience's resistance to being taken away from their own lives and interests and priorities." Ann Beattie's nonfiction (originally published in Life, The New Yorker, The New York Times, and The American Scholar, among others) is a new way to enjoy one of the great writers of her generation. Readers will find much to love in this journey with a curious and fascinating mind. More to Say is part of Godine's Nonpareil imprint: celebrating the joy of discovery with books bound to be classics.

This is the story of a love-smitten Charles; his friend Sam, the Phi Beta Kappa and former coat salesman; and Charles' mother, who spends a lot of time in the bathtub feeling depressed.

A Heart of Wisdom is a book of inspiration and instruction for those who wish to embark on the journey of consciousness in elderhood. The author's art, poetry, and nature photographs will inspire readers, while her simple yet evocative prose will instruct them in the various spiritual and psychological tasks of the elder years of life. These tasks include facing disability and death, doing everything with soul, coming to terms with one's life, discovering what we yet may be, exploring spirituality and faith, and gleaning and passing on our life's wisdom. The power of the images and the beautiful and profound images in the words engage the mind and heart, and will be powerful tools when used by individuals or in groups to help us complete our lives with meaning and purpose, joy and gratitude, confidence and faith.

North Carolina native Ann Rothrock Beattie has produced an autobiographical account of her unique and endearing love story that began on a safari in Zimbabwe, Africa. Her safari love affair eventually lands her in rural Africa on a tobacco farm, where she deals with the challenges and delights of living in Tengwe, Zimbabwe. In her memoir, Ann Beattie gives an open and honest account of various wildlife encounters, a charming community life and the many people she came to know during her time there, and, of course, the love of her life Dave Beattie. The story is set against the backdrop of the unstable tyrannical rule of dictator Robert Mugabe. Mrs. Beattie, her family and their community are ultimately forced to make difficult decisions when their lives and lands come into jeopardy as a result of the political climate in which they live.

A collection of short fiction, twelve works in all, including two never-before-published novellas. Here are disconnected marriages and uneasy reunions, nostalgic reminiscences and sudden epiphanies--a remarkable and moving collage of contemporary lives.

These fifteen stories by Ann Beattie garnered universal critical acclaim on their first publication, earning Beattie the reputation as the most celebrated new voice in American fiction. Today these stories -- "A Vintage Thunderbird;" "The Lawn Party, " " La Petite Danseuse de Quatorze Ans," to name a few -- seem even more powerful, and are read and studied as classics of the short-story form. Spare and elegant, yet charged with feeling and with the tension of things their characters cannot say, they are masterly portraits of improvised lives.

In this assured and unsettling novel, Ann Beattie traces the faltering orbits of the members of one family and the people around them.

Haunting and disturbingly powerful, these stories established Ann Beattie as the most celebrated new voice in American fiction and an absolute master of the short-story form. Beattie captures perfectly the profound longings that came to define an entire generation with insight, compassion, and humor.

Ann Beattie arrived in New York young, observant and celebrated (as "The New Yorker'"s young fiction star) in one of the most compelling and creative eras of recent times. So does the protagonist of her intense new novella, "Walks with Men.
"It is 1980 in New York City, and Jane, a valedictorian fresh out of Harvard, strikes a deal with Neil, an intoxicating writer twenty years her senior. The two quickly become lovers, living together in a Chelsea brownstone, and Neil reveals the rules for a life well lived: If you take food home from a restaurant, don't say it's because you want leftovers for "the dog." Say that you want the bones for "a friend who does autopsies." If you can't stand on your head (which is best), learn to do cartwheels. Have sex in airplane bathrooms. Wear only raincoats made in England. Neil's certainties, Jane discovers, mask his deceptions. Her true education begins.
"One of our era's most vital masters of the short form" ("The Washington Post"), Beattie brilliantly captures a time, a place and a style of engagement. Her voice is original and iconic.

Jody is the mother of five-year-old Will and a promising artist who currently works as a wedding photographer in Virginia. Her boyfriend Mel wants to marry her and tries to convince her to move to New York, where he works in an art gallery. Will goes for a visit with his father in Florida, but his father treats each of these visits as an invasion of privacy. The lives of the characters in this novel showcase the complexity of the postmodern family, the product of an era in which human relationships are more and more fragmented and take less stable and defined forms. This novel is an unsettling tale about emotional survival, but it is also a reflection on universal themes such as the fear of commitment, sex, and childhood fears. "Jody es madre de un nino de cinco anos, Will, y una prometedora artista que, de momento, trabaja como fotografa de bodas en Virginia. Su novio, Mel, quiere casarse con ella y trata de convencerla para que se mude a Nueva York, donde el trabaja en una galeria de arte. Will va a visitar a su padre a Florida, pero este vive cada una de las visitas de su hijo como una intromision en su intimidad. Las vidas de los personajes que pueblan esta novela muestran la complejidad de la familia postmoderna, fruto de un tiempo en el que las relaciones humanas son cada vez mas fragmentarias y adoptan formas menos estables y definidas. Esta novela es un inquietante relato sobre la supervivencia emocional, pero tambien una acertada reflexion sobre temas tan universales como la aversion al compromiso, el sexo o los miedos infantiles. "

Peopled by characters struggling with second marriages, abandoning artistic aspirations, or coming to terms with the betrayal of their own expectations, this collection of eleven new stories from Ann Beattie makes it strikingly clear why she is known as one of "American literature's most adept explorers and interpreters of the unraveling edges of life" (Miami Herald).

From the elegiac story "The Famous Poet, Amid Bougainvillea," in which two men trade ruminations about the odd experience of being cared for by those you are meant to serve, to "The Big-Breasted Pilgrim," wherein a famous chef gets a series of bewildering phone calls from George Stephanopoulos, expressing Clinton's desire to dine at his house, to two stories in which family myths turn out to be both inaccurate and prescient, Perfect Recall comprises Beattie's most ambitious and complex work yet.

Over the course of a dozen years, photographer Georgia Sheron took numerous photographs of her next-door neighbor, "Uncle John" Ludorf, a farmer who plowed with horses and milked cows by hand into his late nineties. Her striking prints, accompanied by John's observations as garnered in a number of interviews, offer an artful, nuanced, and unsentimental look at a bygone way of life.
"I love the way certain photographs overwhelm with the sheer immediacy and vastness of the terrain, so that it takes a few moments to realize there's a tiny person there. In other photographs, we're persuaded to perceive the way the photographer does: John's spread fingers are not so very different from the splayed branches of the towering tree; his veins are only the living version of the shape he holds." --From the introduction by Ann Beattie

To her latest novel, Beattie brings the same documentary accuracy and Chekhovian wit and tenderness that have made her one of the most acclaimed portraitists of contemporary American life. Marshall Lockard, a professor at the local college, is contemplating adultery, unaware that his wife is already committing it.