Open Spaces, City Places

Southwestern writers face a dilemma: their writing about the region's open spaces attracts new residents who "love the desert to death" by building homes and paving roads. While much of the region's literature bears a distinctly rural or anti-urban stamp, most of its residents - including its writers - live in cities. Only in today's Southwest do so many write that which they do not live. In Open Spaces, City Places, fourteen scholars, and writers offer a wide diversity of geographic perspectives, writing styles, and opinions about the changes taking place in the region and its literature. They place the ostensible dilemma in the context of American literary history and explore some of the little-known literature and fresh voices that are emerging from today's Southwestern cities.