Best American Fantasy 3: The Guest Editor

Here's the press release:

BEST AMERICAN FANTASY ANNOUNCES NEXT GUEST EDITOR

Prime Books and Best American Fantasy are pleased to announce that the next guest editor for the annual anthology series will be the critically acclaimed and bestselling writer Kevin Brockmeier, who will edit Best American Fantasy 3 (to be released in September 2009 by Prime Books, an imprint of Wildside Press). Michael Chabon called the first volume of BAF "an important -- no, a crucial -- map of the richness and strangeness and startling range of the modern American short story" and Publisher's Weekly gave it a starred review. The second volume, guest-edited by Ann and Jeff VanderMeer, will be published this September.

Well known for his novels The Brief History of the Dead and The Truth About Celia, Kevin Brockmeier is also an eminent short story writer, having received three O. Henry Awards (one, a first prize), the Chicago Tribune’s Nelson Algren Award, and an Italo Calvino Short Fiction Award. His stories have been published in a wide variety of venues, including The New Yorker, The Georgia Review, McSweeney's, and The Oxford American, and have been reprinted in Best American Short Stories, The Year's Best Fantasy & Horror, and the first volume of Best American Fantasy. Brockmeier's short fiction has been collected in Things That Fall from the Sky and his most recent book, The View from the Seventh Layer. He has also published two children's books, City of Names and Grooves: A Kind of Mystery. He lives in Little Rock, Arkansas.

Series editor Matthew Cheney said, "The challenge for finding our next guest editor was to find someone who would be able to maintain the high quality of the series while also bringing their own slant and perspective. Kevin is perfect -- he was one of the writers included in our first volume, making him already part of the family, and he's also one of the few writers to have appeared not only in Best American Short Stories and The O. Henry Awards, but also The Year's Best Fantasy and Horror.”

Best American Fantasy 3 will contain stories published during 2008. Publishers who want to be sure their work is considered for inclusion should continue to send copies to Matthew Cheney and to Jeff & Ann VanderMeer, who who will remain involved with BAF to coordinate distribution of materials to future guest editors and assist with public relations and administrative tasks. Guidelines and addresses are available at http://bestamericanfantasy.com.