The Pushcart Prize XXXIX: Best of the Small Presses 2015 Edition

Anthologies are made for readers as much as they are for writers, because the collections give both readers and writers exposure to new audiences. This 39th annual prize anthology provides its audience the opportunity to sample distinct voices in contemporary literature. Henderson, editor and publisher of the series since 1976, relied on the efforts of his colleagues to help review and select the 63 entries from 8,000 recommendations from small presses. Noteworthy contributions include Thomas E. Kennedy's "My White House Days," in which the author writes about his job in the White House Communications Agency in 1963 when he was a 19-year-old private first class; "Animals," by Michael Kardos, is a short story about American call-center employees trained to speak using Indian accents; Matthew Vollmer's "For Beds" is a prayer of thanks for the "luxuries afforded to us of our beds"; and the poem "A Tab of Iron on the Tongue" by Sandra Lim calls readers to "turn something unknown into something manageable."