This book offers a carefully chosen selection of recent work by some of Canada's leading writers of short fiction, it is an impressive record of the state of the art in the 1980s. The contributors are Margaret Atwood; Sandra Birdsell; Neil Bissoondath, Barry Callaghan, Matt Cohen, Mavis Gallant, Katherine Govier, W.P. Kinsella, Norman Levine, Joyce Marshall, Alice Munro, Leon Rooke, Carol Shields, Elizabeth Spencer, Audrey Thomas, W.D. Valgardson, Guy Vanderhaeghe and Helen Weinzweig.