We launch into our third decade by welcoming a guest editorand#8212;to select and introduce each yearand#8217;s collectionand#8212;and who better to inaugurate the change than Allan Gurganus. He has combed through hundreds of short stories written in 2005 to assemble a muscular array of talent, twenty stories ranging from low-down, high-octane farce to dark, erotic suspense.

This yearand#8217;s volume combines seasoned writers like Tony Earley, Wendell Berry, and George Singleton with gifted newcomers, including Keith Lee Morris, Erin Brooks Worley and J. D. Chapman. Their stories range from a communal love poem for a hunting dog, to a tale of a newly rich retiree trying to micromanage a Hollywood movie and losing his trophy wife to each new young screenwriter, to a harrowing work about a Virginia slave-woman burned alive for witchcraft.

As Gurganus writes in his introduction, and#8220;The only region of the U.S. ever to declare war on every other region of the nation wonand#8212;if not that great gray fib of secession, then most of the recuperating countryand#8217;s truest stories.and#8221

"In his introduction, novelist Gurganus (Oldest Living Confederate Widow Tells All) questions 'the use of fiction' and suggests that the medium's duty is to do more than merely distract readers from tenuous times. That Gurganus even asks that question at all marks a turning point in the 21-year history of one of the country's most-enduring and highly respected annual short-story anthologies. Heretofore edited by Shannon Ravenel, the series now welcomes a guest editor for each volume. That delicate task falls first to Gurganus, who answers his own question regarding the use of fiction by choosing 20 mostly entertaining stories from both seasoned writers and newcomers. Here are authentic tales of a celebrity divorcée with a plumbing problem (Tony Earley's 'Yard Art') and a white woman stuck in an all-black hospital (Nanci Kincaid's 'The Currency of Love'). Gurganus also indulges in revisionist history (Ben Fountain's 'Brief Encounters with Che Guevara'), The Onion-style news accounts (Chris Bachelder's 'Blue Knights Bounced from CVD Tourney') and a narrative by a rattlesnake rancher (R.T. Smith's 'Tastes Like Chicken'). But the best stories (Kevin Wilson's 'Tunneling to the Center of the Earth,' William Harrison's 'Money Whipped') are the ones in which the protagonists attempt to improve their own little place in the world. Photographs of each author, brief bios and post-story commentary provide added context." Publishers Weekly (Starred Review) (Copyright Reed Business Information, Inc.)

andquot;The spirit of play is at work in this lively latest crop of Southern stories gamely chosen by fiction writer Gurganus...Skillful vernacular storytelling and writing with heart mark many of these selections...a buoyant mix of gravitas and levity...a delight to savor.andquot;

and#8212;Kirkus

and#8220;The absolute best in short literary fiction.and#8221;and#8212;Pagesmagazine

Twenty stories ranging from low-down, high-octane farce to dark, erotic suspenses showcase seasoned writers like Tony Earley, Wendell Berry, and George Singleton with gifted newcomers, including Keith Lee Morris, Erin Brooks Worley, and J.D. Chapman.

Allan Gurganusand#8217;s first novel, Oldest Living Confederate Widow Tells All, was a New York Timesbestseller and has been translated into twelve languages. His novel White Peoplewas the winner of the Los Angeles Book Prize and was a PEN/Faulkner finalist, and his short fiction has appeared in The New Yorker, the Atlantic, and the Paris Reviewand has been anthologized in the The O. Henry Prize Stories, The Best American Short Stories, The Norton Anthology of Short Fiction, and New Stories from the South. He is a 2006 John Simon Guggenheim Fellow.Kathy Pories earned her B.A. and Ph.D. in English Literature at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She taught in the English Department at UNC and at Elon University before joining Algonquin in 1995. She lives in Durham, North Carolina.