Throughout all her work, Janet Kauffman's professed and persistent interest is in language--its material presence and creative power. Situating her work in conventional genres or forms is secondary to her interest in the physicality of words.

Because the characters of Kauffman's stories, usually rural women, are intelligent, resilient, and determined in harsh circumstances, she has been widely recognized as a feminist writer. Yet, while she readily acknowledges her feminism, Kauffman's later work has veered toward a different kind of politics, more concerned with physical and ecological connections than with gender relations. As a result, her traditionally minimalist work has become increasingly experimental with a sometimes excruciatingly close attentiveness to form, space, and presence. At the same time, her literary focus has widened to encompass characters and their environments in equal measure, and she has exhibited less of an inclination to subordinate this focus to the constraints of linearity...