"Widely admired and regularly cited as our best living writer of short stories, Owen Marshall turns the focus on his contemporaries. He has searched the country for the finest selection of stories being written today by a variety of local writers. Their current reoccupations range from a dog with no head, to reproducing reproductions, to amateur drug-dealing, to a little liar talking big their lively characters xperience the clumsy conflicts of adolescence right up to a defiant old age. As our writers travel overseas, so their intriguing stories take us from our own backyards to as far afield as China, Morocco, Berlin and the UK. Contributors: Norman Bilbrough, Ellie Catton, Paul Chapman, Craig Cliff, Charlotte Grimshaw, Lizzie Harwood, David Hill, Christine Johnston, Fiona Kidman, Shonagh Koea, Sarah Laing, Graeme Lay, Frankie McMillan, Carl Nixon, Julian Novitz, Vincent O'Sullivan, Faith Oxenbridge, Sarah Quigley, Alice Tawhai, Peter Wells"--Back cover.