In the Keystone Short Stories series, this introduces another new writer with four rather long, sometimes shapeless, stories which have a family-centered focus and deal with the erosion of human relationships. Mrs. Olsen uses an associative, fitful technique- achieves her effects through snatches of conversations, remnants of memory. Hey Sailor, What Ship features the occasional visit ashore of a drunken tar with "memories to forget.... hopeless hopes to be murdered"; Oh Yes the inevitable end to a friendship between a Negro and a white girl; Ask Me A Riddle the unyielding death (cancer) of an old woman who wants only the solitude of an empty house as a refuge from the long years of poverty, hard work and 7 children; and in I stand Here Ironing, a mother tries to smooth out some of the pain- and the regret- of the deprivations, during the depression and the war, she imposed on her eldest child.... The stories, while they have a real warmth of feeling, lack the definition which will help them to get past a fairly well established reader reluctance to the genre. (Kirkus Reviews)

Tillie Olsen carved a permanent place in American literature on the strength of a single book, TELL ME A RIDDLE in 1962. This collection was widely hailed as a work of genius, in which the voices of ordinary Americans, black and white, male and female, were given their own rhythms and forms of expression. YONNONDIO, Olsen's only novel, was begun during the depression and completed in 1974. It tells the story of the Hollbrooks, an itinerant working-class family in middle-America during the thirties. Brutalised by poverty, they struggle to find a space to breathe, to dream and to create a bettter life for their children. Told in compelling, haunting prose, it is a profound and timeless story of the human will to survive.

Tillie Olsen carved a permanent place in American literature on the strength of a single book, TELL ME A RIDDLE in 1962. This collection was widely hailed as a work of genius, in which the voices of ordinary Americans, black and white, male and female, were given their own rhythms and forms of expression. YONNONDIO, Olsen's only novel, was begun during the depression and completed in 1974. It tells the story of the Hollbrooks, an itinerant working-class family in middle-America during the thirties. Brutalised by poverty, they struggle to find a space to breathe, to dream and to create a bettter life for their children. Told in compelling, haunting prose, it is a profound and timeless story of the human will to survive.

Tillie Olsen was born in Nebraska in 1912 and has lived in San Francisco for most of her life. Among the colleges where Tillie Olsen has taught or been writer-in-residence are Amherst College, Stanford University, MIT, and Kenyon College. She is the recipient of five honorary degrees and several awards. Her work has been translated into thirteen languages.