Coolest American Stories

Coolest American Stories

A little introduction:

We are COOLEST AMERICAN STORIES, a new annual anthology of short stories that aspires to publish the 13 most interesting, compelling, widely appealing "full meal" short stories every year. Our founders and publishers are the same two people as our editors: Mark Wish, who's had plenty of his own short stories published in print venues (including PUSHCART and BEST AMERICAN) in his day, and Elizabeth Coffey, who is a VP in book design at Random House (she designed Barack and Michelle Obama's recent books!) and who recently finished writing a mystery novel. Oh, and there's also our office assistant Ray.

When did your love of books begin?

Both Elizabeth and Mark loved books since they can remember loving anything. Ray has loved crumpled pieces of paper with writing on them since he arrived here at the age of 12 weeks.

When did you start to have the idea to create your compilation?

January 7, 2021. The insurrection in DC led us to have a conversation in which we discussed how we could publish the stories of reader-oriented writers in an effort to make American "cool" again.

How have you found the process for creating the book?

The process for creating COOLEST AMERICAN STORIES 2022 was a bit more difficult than we'd anticipated. We had no problem receiving enough submissions, but because our primary goal was to publish interesting writing people from all walks of life could enjoy, we pushed many of our submitters to revise--and some resented this. (Then again, some loved it.) It was also not as easy as we'd thought to get COOLEST 2022 up and running perfectly on both the Barnes and Noble website and on Amazon. But we hung in there, and here we are, taking pre-orders and planning our launch, which will be January 11, 2022 and will be capped off by a party in NYC.

What would you say to those wanting to become an author?

For anyone aspiring to be an author, we'd say read the books that interest you most, not the books you're "supposed to" read. Then write what you think will interest as many people as possible--in other words, when in doubt, be cool.

Tell us about your book:

We truly believe readers will find our inaugural volume the most interesting collection of short stories published in 2022. We're confident about this because Ben Fountain, Laura McHugh, and Lori Ostlund have praised the verve of our authors' stories in blurbs, and because two reviewers have already suggested there's an unputdownable quality to this volume they haven't seen in other collections. It helps that this volume includes a previously unpublished story by wildly bestselling and multiple-award-winning S. A. Cosby of Blacktop Wasteland fame, as well as the previously unpublished story that led Tina Brown to sign Frances Park's When My Sister Was Cleopatra Moon. Maybe even better, this volume includes bright, startling, stunning gems that university and grant-funded litmags rejected for highbrow reasons; we asked authors to send us such gems, and talented authors out there complied, and we now believe readers can enjoy the short story genre more than they have for years.

What do you love about the writing/reading community?

What we love about the writing/reading community is when things click well with authors, publishers, and readers because of excitement about down-to-earth, interesting storytelling. This makes up for the bickering among lit-people we've noticed cropping up here and there over the years.

If you could say anything to your readers what would it be?

If we could say one thing to our readers, it would be, "Our goal in founding COOLEST AMERICAN STORIES was to wow you once a year with a volume of short stories that will cause you, after you read each offering in it, to say, 'That was a cool story.' We believe we've reached this goal with our inaugural volume--and we promise you we'll continue to give our all to publish a volume every year that will keep you wanting to turn pages."

Where can people connect with you?

People can follow us on Twitter at @JustCoolStories. They can email us at coolestamericanstories@gmail.com and submit to us through Submittable (we'll start reading again, for COOLEST 2023, on January 15, four days after we launch COOLEST 2022). They can also pre-order COOLEST 2022 now at https://www.amazon.com/dp/1737573903/ref=cm_sw_r_apan_glt_fabc_VZQ1CKSXH9KJSZSF68RN and at Coolest American Stories 2022 by Mark Wish, Paperback | Barnes & Noble® (barnesandnoble.com) For more about our philosophy, FAQs, and so on, there's also our website: Coolest American Stories - Home