Poetry. Non-Fiction. Written during the three months following September 11, this book catches the first, passionate reactions of our country's finest writers to the matrix of events that will continue to intensify in the American conscience, and that will inevitably define the dawn of the new century. Contributors include Ai, Wendell Berry, Lucille Clifton, Tess Gallagher, Kimiko Hahn, Joy Harjo, Michael Heller, Denis Johnson, Erica Jong, Maxine Hong Kingston, W.S. Merwin, Naomi Shihab Nye, Robert Pinsky, Stanley Plumly, Ishmael Reed, Scott Russell Sanders, Joanna Scott, Ruth Stone, Henry Taylor, John Updike, John A. Williams, Terry Tempest Williams, and more than 100 more of our most revered writers, representing the diverse spectrum of backgrounds, approaches and attitudes that comprise the American literary landscape.

About the author: William Heyen is a former Senior Fulbright Lecturer in American Literature in Germany and has won awards and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Guggenheim Foundation, Poetry Magazine, and the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters. Heyen is the author of several collections of poetry, including Shoah Train (Etruscan Press).