The Anarchists' Convention & Other Stories — John Sayles

Before John Sayles was an Oscar-nominated screenwriter, he was a National Book Award-nominated writer of fiction. The Anarchists'' Convention is his first short story collection, providing a prism of America through fifteen stories. These everyday people—a kid on the road heading west, aging political activists, a lonely woman in Boston—go about their business with humor and resilience, dealing more in possibility than fact. In the widely anthologized and O. Henry Award-winning ""I-80 Nebraska,"" Sayles perfectly renders the image of a pill-popping trucker who has become a legend of the road.