Children Playing Before a Statue of Hercules

Children Playing Before a Statue of Hercules is a 2005 anthology of short stories edited by David Sedaris.^[1]

Sedaris published this book in order to support 826NYC, a nonprofit writing and tutoring center in Brooklyn, New York.^[2] All of his proceeds, after permission expenses, from Children Playing Before a Statue of Hercules will benefit this organization designed to help students ages six to eighteen develop their writing skills through free writing workshops, publishing projects, and one-on-one help with homework and English-language learning. In the book's epilogue, Sarah Vowell describes 826NYC's work.^[promotion?]

The book's title references a painting by Adriaen van der Werff.

• Introduction by David Sedaris
• "Oh, Joseph, I'm So Tired" by Richard Yates
• "Gryphon" by Charles Baxter
• "Interpreter of Maladies" by Jhumpa Lahiri
• "The Garden Party" by Katherine Mansfield
• "Half A Grapefruit" by Alice Munro
• "Applause, Applause" by Jean Thompson
• "I Know What I'm Doing About All the Attention I've Been Getting" by Frank Gannon
• "Where the Door Is Always Open and the Welcome Mat Is Out" by Patricia Highsmith
• "The Best of Betty" by Jincy Willett
• "Song of the Shirt, 1941" by Dorothy Parker
• "The Girl with the Blackened Eye" by Joyce Carol Oates
• "People Like That Are the Only People Here: Canonical Babbling in Peed Onk" by Lorrie Moore
• "Revelation" by Flannery O'Connor
• "In the Cemetery Where Al Jolson Is Buried" by Amy Hempel
• "Cosmopolitan" by Akhil Sharma
• "Irish Girl" by Tim Johnston
• "Bullet in the Brain" by Tobias Wolff
• Epilogue by Sarah Vowell

• Interview in The Free Times