Anything for Money

In this story from her collection REFUND, which won the Frank O’Connor International Short Story Award and was a finalist for the National Book Award, Karen E. Bender explores the intersection of extreme wealth, love, and familial duty. It's a familiar story made unrecognizable by Bender's refreshing aplomb: when the creator and producer of a wildly successful game show, "Anything for Money," is given charge of his ailing granddaughter, he learns the limits of his fortune.

About the Author: Karen E. Bender is the author of the novels Like Normal People and A Town of Empty Rooms. Her story collection Refund was a finalist for the Frank O’Connor International Short Story Award and a finalist for the National Book Award. Her fiction has appeared in The New Yorker, Granta, Zoetrope, Ploughshares, Story, Harvard Review, The Iowa Review, and other magazines. Her stories have been anthologized in Best American Short Stories, Best American Mystery Stories, New Stories from the South: The Year’s Best, and have won two Pushcart Prizes. She has won grants from the Rona Jaffe Foundation and the NEA. She is also co-editor of the anthology Choice: True Stories of Birth, Contraception, Infertility, Adoption, Single Parenthood, and Abortion. She has taught creative writing at Antioch University Los Angeles, the University of North Carolina at Wilmington, and Tunghai University in Taiwan. She lives in North Carolina with her husband, novelist Robert Anthony Siegel, and their two children.

About the Guest Editor: Counterpoint LLC was created in 2007 through the acquisition of three notable independent presses: Counterpoint, Shoemaker and Hoard, and Soft Skull Press. In January 2008, the company began publishing two imprints, Counterpoint and Soft Skull Press. Shoemaker and Hoard titles are now being published under the Counterpoint imprint.

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About the Publisher: Electric Literature is an independent publisher amplifying the power of storytelling through digital innovation. Electric Literature’s weekly fiction magazine, Recommended Reading, invites established authors, indie presses, and literary magazines to recommend great fiction. Once a month we feature our own recommendation of original, previously unpublished fiction.