Susan Ketchin and Neil Giordano, editors

25 and Under / Fiction

Introduction by Robert Coles

Selected from an extensive nationwide search, this book of fifteen stories by American writers twenty-five years old and younger introduces a new generation of literary talent.

These stories represent a wide and diverse range of visions, sensibilities, techniques and themes, providing a vivid glimpse of our world through the eyes of young artists as we approach the twenty-first century.

From quiet vignettes of triumph over daily despair, to richly textured narratives of almost epic proportion, the authors explore themes at once contemporary and timeless: the often tangled relationship between parent and child; the lingering legacy of the war in Vietnam; the mysteries of birth, death, sexuality, and marriage; and the sometimes redemptive power of suffering. Visceral, engaging, eminently readable, and memorable, these stories provide an inspiring preview of literary achievement to come.

Susan Ketchin is the author of The Christ-Haunted Landscape: Faith and Doubt in Southern Fiction. Formerly fiction editor at Algonquin Books and DoubleTake magazine, she is currently a teaching research associate at the Center for Documentary Studies at Duke University. She lives in Durham, North Carolina. Neil Giordano is associate editor at DoubleTake magazine. He lives in Durham, North Carolina.

"If this is what these men and women can give us when they have yet to turn twenty-five, we can only speculate on what will be forthcoming from them in twenty-five years or fifty a great collective boost to American storytelling."--Robert Coles