The twelfth volume of the annual anthology is packed with nineteen entertaining stories. From a cautionary tale about the difficulties of loving a space alien to a new twist on a young Southerner's struggle in the wilds of Manhattan, these stories range from the hilarious to the poignant. The preface, by Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Robert Olen Butler, looks at what fiction is: "Fiction is, at its heart, the art form of human yearning." The authors in the 1997 edition of New Stories are Gene Able, Dwight Allen, Edward Allen, Robert Olen Butler, Janice Daugharty, Ellen Douglas, Pam Durban, Charles East, Rhian Margaret Ellis, Tim Gautreaux, Elizabeth Gilbert, Lucy Hochman, Beauvais McCaddon, Dale Ray Phillips, Patricia Elam Ruff, Lee Smith, Judy Troy, Marc Vassallo, and Brad Vice.