Since its founding in 1979, the Johns Hopkins Poetry and Fiction series has published forty volumes of short fiction, beginning with Guy Davenport's acclaimed
Da Vinci's Bicycle
. The series was launched with two guiding principles: to publish works of short fiction exhibiting formal excellence and strong emotional appeal and to publish writers at all stages of their careers.
So the Story Goes
gathers the best short fiction of the series, works exhibiting wit, elegance, and wisdom. Writing about a wide variety of subjects and in a multitude of styles, the twenty writers collected here share a mastery of language and an extraordinary ability to entertain.
Ellen Akins from
World Like a Knife
, "Her Book"Steve Barthelme from
And He Tells the Little Horse the Whole Story
, "Zorro"Glenn Blake from
Drowned Moon
, "Marsh"Jennifer Finney Boylan from
Remind Me to Murder You Later
, "Thirty-six Miracles of Lyndon Johnson"Richard Burgin from
Fear of Blue Skies
, "Bodysurfing"Avery Chenoweth from
Wingtips
, "Powerman"Guy Davenport from
, "A Field of Snow on a Slope of the Rosenberg"Tristan Davies from
Cake
, "Counterfactuals"Stephen Dixon from
Time to Go
, "Time to Go"Judith Grossman from
How Aliens Think
, "Rovera"Josephine Jacobsen from
What Goes without Saying
, "On the Island"Greg Johnson from
I Am Dangerous
, "Hemingway's Cats"Jerry Klinkowitz from
Basepaths
, "Basepaths"Michael Martone from
Safety Patrol
, "Safety Patrol"Jack Matthews from
Crazy Women
, "Haunted by Name Our Ignorant Lips"Jean McGarry from
Dream Date
, "The Last Time"Robert Nichols from
In the Air
, "Six Ways of Looking at Farming"Joe Ashby Porter from
Lithuania
, "West Baltimore"Frances Sherwood from
Everything You've Heard Is True
, "History"Robley Wilson from
The Book of Lost Fathers
, "Hard Times"