In June 1999 an issue of The New Yorker, subtitled "The Future of American Fiction," listed Antonya Nelson as one of the twenty best young contemporary American writers. While Nelson has attracted critical attention within the United States with the publication of three acclaimed volumes of short stories, her name is still virtually unknown in the rest of the world. In her short fiction Nelson deals with the complexities of relationships between different generations, between men and women, women and women, best friends, lovers, and in-laws. Her stories reveal the marrow of such relationships under the rubric of "family terrorism"--games of power and manipulation, the little techniques perfected over the years to get under the skin of kinfolk and close friends. Nelson strips bare the fundamentals of human connection and its counterpart, loneliness. Her characters cover a broad spectrum of identities-- academics, miners, children, animals--but are, on the...