Student Body: Short Stories About College Students And Professors [Paperback]

"University campuses, small and large, are treasure-troves of material for fiction writers," editor McNally states in his introduction. He has indeed unearthed some treasures, by writers as diverse as Richard Russo, Stephen King, Dan Chaon, and Thisbe Nissen. The collection is divided into two sections, separating stories told from the students' perspectives from those told from the educators' point-of-view. In Russo's gracefully told tale, a 70-year-old nun joins an advanced creative writing class and uses her story to tell the tale of her life, which is as rife with subtext as any novel. King's gripping story of a young man's memories of a serial killer roaming a college campus is a selection from his first short story collection. Chaon and Amy Knox Brown weigh in with stories of fraternity brothers, Gillian Kendall writes of a professor's deeply buried passion for her student, and Tom Whalen's attractive female student wanders through a myriad of lecherous professors. This excellent collection captures both the passion and the isolation in academia. Kristine Huntley
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Contempory short stories about college life, by famed writers and rising stars.

Fiction, like life, has its lessons, and it's a wild ride on the learning curve when storytelling goes to school. The short stories in this collection negotiate the heights, the depths, and the unexpected angles of campus intrigue, sexual and intellectual awakenings and reckonings, and all the heartache and hilarity of a sentimental education. The work of such well-known authors as Stephen King, Marly Swick, and Ron Carlson appears here as well as stories by most promising new voices. The results are sometimes harrowing (in King's story, a serial killer roams a campus), sometimes droll (in Lucia Perillo's "The Wife of an Indian," an academic adjusts his ethnicity to get tenure), and often poignant (as in Dan Chaon's story of the aftermath of an accident that injures a fraternity president.)

"This wonderfully eclectic group of smart tales about professors and students proves that on either side of the teacher's desk there are equal measures of yearning, trickery, passion, sorrow, and comedy."-Karen Stolz, author of World of Pies

"The Student Body is a real education. These fine and often funny stories by Richard Russo, Ron Carlson, and other teachers/writers prove that academic writing can rank at the head of the class."-Rita Ciresi, author of Pink Slip and Blue Italian

"A rich and varied anthology that will interest creative writing professors and students as well as the general public. Richard Russo's powerful story, The Whore's Child, is worth the price of admission alone; but there are other equally impressive and memorable stories. I will definitely put this on my list of required books in my fiction writing classes."-Judith Slater, author of The Baby Can Sing and Other Stories

John McNally is assistant professor of English at Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. His collection of stories, Troublemakers, won the prestigious John Simmons/Iowa Short Fiction Award. A former Djerassi Fiction Fellow at the Wisconsin Institute of Creative Writing, McNally is also the editor of High Infidelity: 24 Great Short Stories by Some of Our Best Contemporary Writers.