In this collection of interviews, eleven of the most important American male fiction writers of our time - Pulitzer Prize winner Robert Olen Butler, National Book Award winner Charles Johnson, National Book Award nominees Thom Jones, Barry Hannah, and Stephen Dixon, as well as Russell Banks, Rick Moody, Chris Offutt, Stewart O'Nan, Steve Erickson, and Gordon Lish - candidly discuss the origin, process, and achievement of their own fiction. All of the writers in this collection are working with personal truths, particular to their experience, yet they operate within a defined referential tradition. The material is unmistakably their own, the way they tell the story is their own, but they are always mindful of the world that preceded them.