Which writers will define the new century of American literary fiction? For the year 2000, Conjunctions undertakes to answer this question with an ambitious map of the contemporary literary landscape. The first of a two-volume anthology, Conjunctions:34, American Fiction: States of the Art, will complement a companion volume, coming out in fall 2000, Conjunctions:35, American Poetry: States of the Art, in charting the coordinates of innovative American letters.American Fiction gathers unpublished, commissioned works by a pantheon of writers—from new voices to recognized masters of the genre, and with a particular emphasis on those writers currently mid-stream in their writing lives. Risky, classical, innovative, groundbreaking, this is the fiction we believe will prove the old dictum: Art is news that stays news. Among the three dozen novelists and short story writers presented in Conjunctions:34 are David Foster Wallace, Rikki Ducornet, William T. Vollmann, Rosario Ferre, Rick Moody, Cristina Garcia, Dale Peck, Jeffrey Eugenides, Maureen Howard, Paul Auster, Jessica Hagedorn, Michael Cunningham, Alexander Theroux, Walter Abish, Jamaica Kincaid, Robert Antoni, Lydia Davis, William H. Gass, Mary Caponegro, Julia Alvarez and many surprise contributors. Emerging writers such as Pamela Ryder, Christopher Sorrentino and Jonathan Safran Foer will also be featured, as well as important in-depth conversations between Bradford Morrow, Richard Powers and Joanna Scott. These watershed issues of Conjunctions will be essential reading for everyone interested in where contemporary American fiction and poetry is headed in the new millennium. Bradford Morrow edits both volumes.