25 and Under

"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
"I'm grateful to these young authors for making art of their fresh perceptions." -- Alice Elliot Dark, author of Naked to the Waist
"The future of fiction is in good hands." -- Lee Smith, author of Saving Grace
"These stories are both a critique and a celebration of our all-too human culture. They define what it means to be gifted, to be truthful, as we fumble and love and write our way into a new millennium." -- Robert Morgan, author of The Truest Pleasure
"Read these stories to meet the next generation, to be present as our youngest writers test their voices and begin to lay claim to their own literary territory." -- Katrina Kenison, annual editor, The Best American Short Stories
"It's hard not to be optimistic about the generation coming up fast behind us when writers this young can already articulate their quirks and their passions with such skill and clarity and brio." -- Rosellen Brown, author of Before and After
"These young writers combine vigorous storytelling with an ear for spoken language and an eye for apt detail. Above all, they bring a surprising maturity, and a lot of heart, to their finely wrought glimpses of the human condition." -- C. Michael Curtis, senior editor, The Atlantic Monthly
"The freshness—even imprudence—of imagination here is fun. Children! It's like a rude, multiple outbreak of Capote-ism." -- Padgett Powell, author of Edisto