Since its founding in 1979, the Johns Hopkins Poetry and Fiction series has published forty volumes of short fiction, beginning with Guy Davenport's acclaimed Da Vinci's Bicycle. The series was launched with two guiding principles: to publish works of short fiction exhibiting formal excellence and strong emotional appeal and to publish writers at all stages of their careers.

So the Story Goes gathers the best short fiction of the series, works exhibiting wit, elegance, and wisdom. Writing about a wide variety of subjects and in a multitude of styles, the twenty writers collected here share a mastery of language and an extraordinary ability to entertain.

Ellen Akins from World Like a Knife, "Her Book"
Steve Barthelme from And He Tells the Little Horse the Whole Story, "Zorro"
Glenn Blake from Drowned Moon, "Marsh"
Jennifer Finney Boylan from Remind Me to Murder You Later, "Thirty-six Miracles of Lyndon Johnson"
Richard Burgin from Fear of Blue Skies, "Bodysurfing"
Avery Chenoweth from Wingtips, "Powerman"
Guy Davenport from Da Vinci's Bicycle, "A Field of Snow on a Slope of the Rosenberg"
Tristan Davies from Cake, "Counterfactuals"
Stephen Dixon from Time to Go, "Time to Go"
Judith Grossman from How Aliens Think, "Rovera"
Josephine Jacobsen from What Goes without Saying, "On the Island"
Greg Johnson from I Am Dangerous, "Hemingway's Cats"
Jerry Klinkowitz from Basepaths, "Basepaths"
Michael Martone from Safety Patrol, "Safety Patrol"
Jack Matthews from Crazy Women, "Haunted by Name Our Ignorant Lips"
Jean McGarry from Dream Date, "The Last Time"
Robert Nichols from In the Air, "Six Ways of Looking at Farming"
Joe Ashby Porter from Lithuania, "West Baltimore"
Frances Sherwood from Everything You've Heard Is True, "History"
Robley Wilson from The Book of Lost Fathers, "Hard Times"

John T. Irwin is the Decker Professor in the Humanities at the Johns Hopkins University and former chair of the Writing Seminars. His books include American Hieroglyphics, The Mystery to a Solution, and Doubling and Incest / Repetition and Revenge, all available from Johns Hopkins. Jean McGarry is chair of the Writing Seminars at the Johns Hopkins University. She is the author of Dream Date, Gallagher's Travels, Home at Last, The Very Rich Hours, and Airs of Providence,all available from Johns Hopkins.