It was an anthology that began simply enough: as a way to gather together the best kinds of writing going on in the South. It was also a way, back then, for editor Shannon Ravenel to keep tabs on who was writing what. Some of those voices that she heard first are now well-known: Barbara Kingsolver, Robert Olen Butler, Marly Swick, Rick Bass, Abraham Verghese, James Lee Burke, Larry Brown. Our goal is still the same-to find the most original and affecting stories. And this year, in our newest tradition, we're pleased to include a preface by Tony Earley, which calls into question the message of one of the most-anthologized Southern stories of our time. The 1999 edition gathers stories by: Michael Knight, Pinckney Benedict, Richard Schmitt, Clyde Edgerton, Andrew Alexander, Mary Clyde, Richard Bausch, Tony Earley, Michael Erard, Rick DeMarinis, Heather Sellers, Kurt Rheinheimer, Ingrid Hill, William Gay, Janice Daugharty, Mary Gordon, George Singleton, Tom Franklin Laura Payne Butler, and Wendy Brenner. An indispensable resource for aspiring writers, students, and readers of Southern fiction, New Stories from the South also includes the story behind each story. We continue to offer an updated list of magazines consulted by the editor, along with a complete list of all the stories selected each year since the series' inception, in 1986. As any good Southerner knows, literature written on the sunnier side of the Mason-Dixon is every bit as diverse as literature anywhere else. Doubters need look no further than the latest edition of New Stories from the South , the acclaimed annual anthology edited by Shannon Ravenel. This year's version features well-known names such as Richard Bausch, Rick DeMarinis, and Clyde Edgerton right alongside up-and-coming talents such as Laura Payne Butler and Heather Sellers. Looking for monkeys? We got your monkey right here, ordered from the back of a comic book in Andrew Alexander's bittersweet short-short, "Little Bitty Pretty One." ("My father, a doctor, would pretend to examine the monkey when we asked him to. 'Have you been a good little boy?' he would say to the monkey over and over, and then answer in a high monkey-voice, 'Yes, I've been a good little boy.'") Naturally, there's a fair selection of Southern-style humor, from Clyde Edgerton's "Lunch at the Piccadilly," about persuading an elderly relative not to drive, to George Singleton's "Caulk," about a painting job taken just a little too far. "Lookit: I swear it doesn't get 90 degrees at dawn in South Carolina during October.... One time my grandmother on my father's side said it reached 110 and rained simultaneously on Christmas day, 1950, but at that point she'd gone through both radiation and chemotherapy--she liked to pull the top of her dress down and show the cavity where one breast had existed, then say how smoking is bad for you." Both the darkest and the most powerful story in this collection turns out to be Tom Franklin's Edgar Award-winning "Poachers," in which a legendary game warden turns the tables on a trio of half-wild backwoods boys who like to hunt out of season. African parrots and Crimson Tide football, circus animals and reattached feet: so many wild and wonderful tales, and not a stereotype among them. Southerners, the next time someone makes a Bubba joke in your presence, give 'em a copy of this anthology and tell them politely where they can place it. --Mary Park Once again, this series does not disappoint. As the South has changed, so have the voices emerging from the deltas, farms, and burgeoning metropolitan areas. These voices offer personal histories of human interactions, such as Rick DeMarinis's "Borrowed Hearts." Others, like Mary Gordon's "Storytelling," reveal the gifts of friendships and the inspirations for stories. Most of these stories are not particularly Southern-related, but they are most definitely Southern-flavored. The memorable writing of Laura Payne Butler's "Booker T's Coming Home" speaks of the legacy of the South, while this reader's personal favorite, Wendy Brenner's "The Human Side of Instrumental Transcommunication," seems to be taking place anywhere and nowhere. Short stories such as these remind the world that the South has rich, deep talent and fertile ground for the art of storytelling. There's writing here to please any reader, no matter what his or her geography.AShannon Haddock, Bellsouth Corporate Lib. & Business Research Ctr., Birmingham, AL Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc. This annual collection of American stories has become an important source of writing from and about the South. Ravenel's selection, as usual, has range and variety: stories from the New Yorker and Esquire as well as from more obscure magazines, such as Five Points ; stories from fairly well known story writers, such as Richard Bausch and Rick DeMarinis, as well as from less-familiar ones. Bausch's very brief piece captures a recognizable tableau of household rela