Showing results by author "Rick Bass" in All Categories

From his bid to become Eudora Welty's lawn boy to the time George Plimpton offered to punch him in the nose, lineage has always been important to Rick Bass. Now at a turning point - in his midfifties, with his long marriage dissolved and his grown daughters out of the house - Bass strikes out on a journey of thanksgiving. His aim: to make a memorable meal for each of his mentors, to express his gratitude for the way they have shaped not only his writing but his life.

These stories reveal men and women living with passion and tenderness at the outer limits of the senses, each attempting to triumph against fate. Bass provides searing insights into the complexity of family and romantic entanglements, and his lush and striking language draws us ineluctably into the lives of these engaging people and their vivid surroundings.

Selected Shorts: Falling in Love presents a collection of stirring tales of love and longing. Selected Shorts is an award-winning series of classic and contemporary short fiction read by acclaimed actors. The Selected Shorts radio series is a co-production of Symphony Space and WNYC, New York Public Radio, and is heard on public radio stations nationwide.

Author Rick Bass has won the Pushcart Prize and the O. Henry and PEN/Nelson Algren Awards for his short fiction. With The Diezmo he crafts a stirring novel that sheds light on an extraordinary but little-known episode of Texas history. When Sam Houston organizes an attack into Mexico, the gloryseeking Texans are overwhelmed. Captured, they face the terrible Diezmo - a game of chance that ensures every 10th man will be killed.

“The Hermit’s Story,” a short story by Rick Bass, brings listeners to a remote mountainous place where two couples are having Thanksgiving dinner together. Up in the mountains, things are always quiet. In the valley below, one can usually find the hustle and bustle of a town—but not this Thanksgiving. The power is out, and a deep, dark peace holds the land.

The fiction of Rick Bass has been honored with O. Henry Awards, Pushcart Prizes, and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts. Nashville Chrome presents Maxine, Bonnie, and Jim Ed Brown, a family act with a hit record sitting atop 1959’s country music charts. The world at their feet, lives of success seem to spread out before them like an unending highway. But celebrity has its price, and the times ahead will deliver more than their fair share of bumps in the road.

Most people associate storms and other big weather with death - with the kind of force that makes each of us wonder about life, time, and the nature of our surroundings. Some people go out looking for bad weather or go to places where they're likely to encounter it. Others have the misfortune of being at the wrong place at the wrong time. Still, the stories in Storm have more to say than that.