The Best Peace Fiction
The Best Peace Fiction
A Social Justice Anthology
Named Peacemaker of the Year in the 2022 Independent Publisher (IPPY) Book Awards
In the first anthology of its kind, Robert Olen Butler and Phong Nguyen assemble an astounding collection of stories that cause readers to contemplate war, peace, and social justice in a new light. The fourteen stories featured in this volume explore the varied and often unexpected outcomes of violence. The authors explore the tragedies that occur closer to home—not on military battlefields but rather in places that are never meant to be battlefields, like schools and churches. The fiction reveals the violence that renders our most sacred and seemingly safest of places vulnerable.
Not a utopian project, this book asks whether literature has a role in furthering the ongoing pursuit of peace and justice for all. While exploring tragedy, these stories also offer hope for healing, illuminating how people can move forward from the moments when their lives change and how they can regain and reshape safe spaces to find solace.
Robert Olen Butler is the Krafft Professor of English and creative writing at Florida State University. He is the author of twenty-four works of fiction, including Perfume River and A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain, which won the 1993 Pulitzer Prize. Phong Nguyen is a professor and the Miller Family Endowed Chair of Literature and Writing at the University of Missouri. He is the author of two story collections and three novels, including Roundabout: An Improvisational Fiction.
Introduction
Phong Nguyen
Coffins for Kids!
Wendy Rawlings
All the Names for God
Anjali Sachdeva
Down to the Levant
Joshua Idaszak
A Small Dark Quiet
Miranda Gold
The Resurrection of Ma Jun
Denis Wong
The Time is Nigh
Camille F. Forbes
Bon Voyage, Charlie
Dan Pope
A Woman with a Torch
Mark Powell
Ada, After the Bomb
Alicia Upano
L’homme blessé
Ron Rash
Letters Arrive from the Dead
Rachel Kadish
Blue River Hotel
Stephen Henighan
The White Spot
Jonathan Blum
The Man on the Beach
Josie Sigler Sibara
Acknowledgments
Contributors
