American Fiction, Volume Nine: The Best Unpublished Short Stories by Emerging Writers - Softcover

from the introduction by Joyce Carol Oates: In reading, and rereading, this gathering of wonderfully variegated short stories, I felt the quickening of excitement that comes with being a privileged listener. In each of these stories, and especially in the stories I've singled out for the somewhat artificial distinctions of 'prize winners,' I could sense the pulse of urgency that makes a story vivid, evocative, authentic, commanding. . . . To read the opening sentences of these stories is to be drawn irresistibly into their worlds.