A hardcover standalone edition of Annie Proulx’s iconic story “Brokeback Mountain,” (first published in The New Yorker and then in the collection Close Range)—the basis for the multi-award-winning film starring Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal.

Annie Proulx has written some of the most original and brilliant short stories in contemporary literature, and for many readers and reviewers, “Brokeback Mountain” is her masterpiece.

Ennis del Mar and Jack Twist, two ranch hands, come together when they’re working as sheepherder and camp tender one summer on a range above the tree line. At first, sharing an isolated tent, the attraction is casual, inevitable, but something deeper catches them that summer.

Both men work hard, marry, and have kids because that’s what cowboys do. But over the course of many years and frequent separations this relationship becomes the most important bond in their lives, and they do anything they can to preserve it.

The New Yorker won the National Magazine Award for Fiction for its publication of “Brokeback Mountain,” and the story was included in Prize Stories 1998: The O. Henry Awards. In gorgeous and haunting prose, Proulx limns the difficult, dangerous affair between two cowboys that survives everything but the world’s violent intolerance.

About The Author

Gus Powell

Annie Proulx

Annie Proulx is the author of eleven books, including the novels The Shipping News and Barkskins, and the story collection Close Range. Her many honors include a Pulitzer Prize, a National Book Award, the Irish Times International Fiction Prize, and a PEN/Faulkner award. Her story “Brokeback Mountain,” which originally appeared in The New Yorker, was made into an Academy Award–winning film. Fen, Bog, and Swamp is her second work of nonfiction. She lives in New Hampshire.

Product Details

Publisher: Scribner (September 2, 2025)
Length: 64 pages
ISBN13: 9781668212707

Raves and Reviews

Praise for Brokeback Mountain

"When I first read 'Brokeback Mountain,' Annie Proulx's seminal short story about gay cowboys in love, I wondered how I might carry it with me forever, literally, in the form of a tattoo... I wonder sometimes if most great love stories aren't also ghost stories." —Michael Cunningham, from The New Yorker appreciation (March 3, 2025)

“Proulx’s understanding is at its most remarkable in the astonishing ‘Brokeback Mountain.’ She knows what she could only know… by the infrared that allows a very few writers clear sight in the dark of the imagination.” —Richard Eder, The New York Times Book Review

“’Brokeback Mountain’ does some of the best things a story can do. It abolishes the old West clichés, excavates and honors a certain kind of elusive life, then nearly levels you with the emotional weight at its center.” —Gail Caldwell, The Boston Sunday Globe

“A stand-out story… ‘Brokeback Mountain’ is the sad chronology of a love affair between two men who can’t afford to call it that. They know what they’re not—not queer, not gay—but have no idea what they are.” —Walter Kirn, New York

Praise for Annie Proulx’s Short Stories

“Annie Proulx is a genuine character—a true original. She has a shrewd understanding of people, a strong feeling for landscape . . . and a wry sense of humor rather like Mark Twain’s.” —Los Angeles Times

“With her biting, invigorating prose, Annie Proulx evokes the expansive landscape her characters hold dear.” —O, The Oprah Magazine

“Ms. Proulx writes with all the brutal beauty of one of her Wyoming snowstorms.” —Michael Knight, The Wall Street Journal

“It’s the prose, as much as the inventiveness of the stories that shines and shines. Every single sentence surprises and delights and just bowls you over.” —Carolyn See, The Washington Post Book World