Foreword / Scott Cawelti --
Room of her own : the enduring example of Barbara Lounsberry (essay) / Susan J. Koch --
Origins of a nonfiction writer (essay) / Gay Talese --
Poems for Barbara (poems) / Nancy Price --
What's right with Sweden? What's wrong with Sweden? Who cares? (essay) / Scott Cawelti --
"Toërts or frommet" : my Precious bane (essay) / Anne G. Myles --
Artists and angels (fiction) / Grant Tracey --
Coming apart in Cairo (fiction) / Alice Swensen --
Listing to the right (creative nonfiction) / John Wilson Swope --
Americana : Pulitzer Prize-winning fiction, 1917-2006 (essay) / Grace Ann Hovet and Theodore R. Hovet --
Cold chicken (creative nonfiction) / Ron Sandvik --
A change in plans (fiction) / Salma Akbar --
Martin Delaney and the discourses of African American conservatism (essay) / Julie Husband --
San Franciscan in the Midwest (poems) / Vince Gotera --
On French trampolines (creative nonfiction) / John Bresland --
Desire and the intellectual life (essay) / Karen Tracey.