Introduction / by John Freeman -- The lesson / Toni Cade Bambara, 1972 -- A conversation with my father / Grace Paley, 1972 -- The ones who walk away from Omelas / Ursula K. Le Guin, 1973 -- Bicycles, muscles, cigarettes / Raymond Carver, 1973 -- The flowers / Alice Walker, 1973 -- Girl / Jamaica Kincaid, 1978 -- The red covertible / Louise Erdrich, 1981 -- The reencounter / Isaac Bashevis Singer, 1982 -- Taking care / Joy Williams, 1982 -- Story / Lydia Davis, 1983 -- China / Charles Johnson, 1984 -- Pet milk / Stuart Dybek, 1984 -- The way we live now / Susan Sontag, 1986 -- Salvador late or early / Sandra Cisneros, 1986 -- The things they carried / Tim O'Brien, 1986 -- River of names / Dorothy Allison, 1988 -- Emergency / Denis Johnson, 1991 -- Sticks / George Saunders, 1994 -- Fiesta, 1980 / Junot Díaz, 1996 -- Silence / Lucia Berlin, 1998 -- The twenty-seventh man / Nathan Englander, 1998 -- Bullet in the brain / Tobias Wolff, 1998 -- The hermit's story / Rick Bass, 1998 -- A temporary matter / Jhumpa Lahiri, 1998 -- The penthouse / Andrew Holleran, 1999 -- The fix / Percival Everett, 1999 -- Water child / Edwidge Danticat, 2000 -- The American embassy / Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, 2003 -- The conductor / Aleksandar Hemon, 2005 -- St. Lucy's home for girls raised by wolves / Karen Russell, 2007 -- The last thing we need / Claire Vaye Watkins, 2010 -- The paper menagerie / Ken Liu, 2011 -- The dune / Stephen King, 2011 -- Diem perdidi / Julie Otsuka, 2011 -- The great silence / Ted Chiang, 2015 -- The midnight zone / Lauren Groff, 2016 -- Anyone can do it / Manuel Muñoz, 2019.