Creative Writing - Audition Tips & Recommended Reading

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Fiction Anthologies:

Best American Short Stories (annually)
New Stories from the South (annually)
The O. Henry Awards (annually)
Scribner Anthology of Contemporary Short Fiction
Vintage Book of Contemporary American Short Stories
The Norton Anthology of Contemporary Fiction

Fiction Writers:

Alice Adams
Isabel Allende
Steve Almond
Margaret Atwood
Brad Barkley
Donald Barthelme
Frederick Barthelme
Rick Bass
Richard Bausch
Charles Baxter
Ann Beattie
Madison Smartt Bell
Amy Bloom
T.C. Boyle
Wendy Brenner
Ethan Canin
Ron Carlson
Raymond Carver
Dan Chaon
Fred Chappell
John Cheever
Sandra Cisneros
Brock Clarke
Harry Crews
Rick Demarinis
Junot Diaz
Andre Dubus
Stuart Dybek
Tony Earley
Nathan Englander
Louise Erdrich
Tom Franklin
Ernest Gaines
Mary Gaitskill
George Garrett
Tim Gautreaux
William Gay
Kaye Gibbons
Ellen Gilchrist
Alan Gurganus
Barry Hannah
Jim Harrison
Amy Hempel
Pam Houston
Ha Jin
Thom Jones
Jamaica Kincaid
Michael Knight
Jhumpa Lahiri
Mark Leyner
Ralph Lombreglia
Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Bobbie Ann Mason
Jill McCorkle
Rick Moody
Lorrie Moore
Alice Munro
Antonya Nelson
Joyce Carol Oates
Flannery O'Connor
Chris Offutt
Charles Portis
ZZ Packer
Tom Paine
Grace Paley
Michael Parker
Tom Perotta
Jayne Anne Phillips
Padgett Powell
Annie Proulx
Mark Richard
Lewis Robinson
George Saunders
Mona Simpson
Lee Smith
Henry Taylor
Peter Taylor
John Updike
Alice Walker
Brad Watson
Eudora Welty
Joy Williams
Tobias Wolff
Steve Yarbrough
Richard Yates

Poetry Anthologies:

Best American Poetry (annually)
Norton Anthology of Postmodern Poetry (Paul Hoover)
Norton Anthology of Modern Poetry
The Poet's Companion (Addonizio and Laux)

Poets:

John Berryman
Donald Justice
Fanny Howe
Randell Jarrell
Elizabeth Bishop
Galway Kinnell
Robert Lowell
Bill Knott
Joseph Brodskey
Yusef Komanyakaa
Gwendolyn Brooks
Adrienne Rich
Michael Burkard
Frank O'Hara
Anne Carson
Pablo Medina
Hart Crane
James Merrill
Robert Creeley
James Wright
Sylvia Plath
Tess Gallagher
Jack Gilbert
Claudia Rankine
Allen Ginsberg
Martha Rhodes
Louise Gluck
Theodore Roethke
Jorie Graham
Mary Ruefle
Michael S. Harper
Rita Dove
Edward Hirsch
C.K. Williams
Sharon Olds
Tony Hoagland
Larry Levis
Franz Wright
William Stafford
Mary Oliver
Heather McHugh
Ellen Bryant Voigt
Thomas Lux
James Dickey
Robert Hass
Hugh Seidman
Seamus Heaney
Charles Simic
Brenda Hillman
Cole Swenson
Frank Bidart
Kevin Young
Denis Johnson
Billy Collins
Ted Kooser
Donald Hall
W.S. Merwin
Mark Doty
Robert Pinsky
Dean Young