In choosing stories for this companion volume to The Oxford Book of Canadian Verse, Margaret Atwood and Robert Weaver have combined their different but complementary experiences of the Canadian short story.

Author of more than 40 books, Margaret Atwood has won as many awards, including the Union Poetry Prize (Chicago), the Bess Hoskins Prize (Chicago), the Radcliffe Graduate Medal, a Guggenheim Fellowship, the Welsh Arts Council International Writers Prize, the Los Angeles Times Fiction Writers Award, the Ritz Hemingway Prize (Paris), the Arthur C. Clarke Award for best Science Fiction, the John Hughes Prize of the Welsh Development Board, and a Centennial Medal from Harvard University. Her work has been translated into more than sixteen languages. Robert Weaver, now retired from his 30-year career as executive producer of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation literary radio show "Anthology", has edited more than a dozen anthologies.