The New Yorker’s much-discussed roundup highlighting young authors to watch, its “20 Under 40” issue, is headed for book form. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, which happens to publish five of the 20 writers included on the magazine’s list, will release the full collection of stories (and, in some cases, novel excerpts) The New Yorker is running by the elite young crew. Most of the pieces will be running in the magazine's double fiction issue, which hits stands on June 14, while a few will run in issues appearing later in the summer. FSG's trade paperback original, 20 Under 40: Stories from The New Yorker, is scheduled to go on sale December 7.
The list of authors who made the cut, and the thinking behind their choosing, is outlined in an editors' note in the June 14 issue. (That note, in keeping with the magazine's practice of publishing future print content earlier on the Web, is now available online.) As the editors explain, the list--it's the first of its kind since a 1999 one featuring pieces by a varied collection of known and not-so-known young authors that ran in an issue entitled “The Future of American Fiction”--is to shine a light on “young fiction writers who we believe are, or will be, key to their generation.”
