What Happened to the Short Story
Each year the hast American short stories are hand-picked by a distinguished jury. The O. Henry Memorial Awards are conferred on the best. and the finalists, a group of some twenty, are then published in a Memorial Volume. HERSCHEL BRICKELL, author, editor, and critic, has been a judge of the O. Henry Awards for the past eleven years, He has had an exceptional opportunity to reflect on the changes which have occurred in the short story — changes which he describes in the essay which follows.