In early 1985, Ellen Gilchrist's short story collection, Victory over Japan, won a National Book Award, but just a few years earlier—say in 1980—it would have been difficult even to publish a book of short stories. Popular publishing wisdom stated that the short story collection had no commercial value, particularly if the author had not previously published a well-received novel. Editors, already worried about the shrinking hardcover market, were reluctant to commit their budgets to such risky ventures, and writers whispered about deals between authors and publishing houses in which so-and-so had been compelled to agree to provide a novel in exchange for publication of their book of short stories. But not only commercial publishing was inhospitable to the short story; the small presses, moving into an area the larger houses had abandoned long before, concentrated their attention on books of poetry, and the university presses, cautious about the audience for short fiction, limited their support to annual open competitions, resulting in the publication of a few prize-winning collections each year.

"I always thought of myself as a short story writer," said novelist Lynn Sharon Schwartz, in a recent interview with Publishers Weekly. "I wrote novels because people told me that you had to in order to get published. Each time I did a novel, Harper & Row would say, "Wait. When you have a reputation, we'll do your stories." I really never thought they would, but they did."