Some of this year's Pushcart items

 kw: book reviews, story reviews, anthologies, literature, fiction, poetry

The cover illustration for 2024 Pushcart Prize XLVIII: Best of the Small Presses is red on orange, as seen here (the colors change almost yearly). It was edited by Bill Henderson and an editorial board. For my purposes, the appeal of these stories varies from year to year. This year seems average, with eleven of the 63 items under my belt so far. I'll comment briefly on a few that I liked.

As is my habit, if I really don't like a story, I don't mention it. In this case, though, I've picked four to comment on, of these first eleven. I sorta-liked most of the other seven. As I read more, I'll post successive portions.

• "Sunny Talks" by Lydia Conklin – A cross-generational coming-of-age story about the trans experience. An older woman who wanted to transition to male gender, who now calls herself non-binary, is aunt to a trans boy who had the opportunity to transition (at least chemically so far), who is an Internet influencer in the trans community. The feelings are raw; this will make many uncomfortable. For that alone, it is worth reading, and even the more because it is brilliantly written.
• "Tender" by Sophie Klahr – A rare bit of free verse that I actually enjoyed. That is very rare! The theme is loneliness and death. The writing is sufficiently tight that I cannot see how setting it to rhymed, metric verse could avoid ruining it. There are but 14 lines, though I would not call it a sonnet (perhaps free verse aficionados would do so).
• "Backsiders" by Kathryn Scanlon – Horse people, as told by a horse person, apparently over several interviews. This one isn't stated to be fiction, so I take it as genuine. From what I know of people in the horse racing circuit, this is straight-up journalism, from a more personal viewpoint than usual.
• "The Future is a Click Away" by Allegra Hyde – A fantasy on "The Algorithm", as it becomes so aware of our inner rhythms that it anticipates what we want and delivers it just before we might have requested it…until it overdoes it. I have lost count of how many times I have checked reviews for something—and forgotten to use DuckDuckGo—and purchased something, then seen ad after ad for that thing for a period of several weeks. I've wanted to write to Google, "I already bought it. Leave me alone! Don't you have a record of my purchases, also?" But I always think, I don't want to give them ideas…

As is usual for this annual volume, the writing is excellent, even if the subjects are not always to my liking. So far there is only one story I got a page into and then skipped the rest.