Selected from a survey of more than 200 English professors, award-winning short-story writers, novelists, and fiction workshop directors, a remarkable collection of North American literature written since 1970.

Sherman Alexie ? Margaret Atwood ? Toni Cade Bambara ? Russell Banks ? John Barth ? Donald Barthelme ? Rick Bass ? Richard Bausch ? Charles Baxter ? Madison Smartt Bell ? Amy Bloom ? Kate Braverman ? Robert Olen Butler ? Ethan Canin ? Raymond Carver ? Sandra Cisneros ? Michael Cunningham ? Junot Diaz ? Stuart Dybek ? Tony Earley ? Louise Erdrich ? Richard Ford ? David Gates ? Tim Gautreaux ? Ron Hansen ? Amy Hempel ? Denis Johnson ? Edward P. Jones ? Thom Jones ? David Michael Kaplan ? Janet Kaufman ? Jamaica Kincaid ? David Leavitt ? Reginald McKnight ? Lorrie Moore ? Bharati Mukherjee ? Alice Munro ? Joyce Carol Oates ? Tim O'Brien ? Cynthia Ozick ? Annie Proulx ? Mark Richard ? Lee Smith ? Susan Sontag ? Amy Tan ? Melanie Rae Thon ? Stephanie Vaughn ? Alice Walker ? John Edgar Wideman ? Joy Williams