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.

This disparity between the urban life of Southwestern writers and readers and the anti-urban sentiments found in much of the region's writing has given to the latter a sense of unreality, for while much of contemporary American literature focuses on critical realism, Southwestern literature dwells primarily on the mythic, the spacious - the past.

Open Spaces, City Places offers a series of essays by fourteen scholars and writers who address this dissonance. The contributors 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 dichotomy 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.

This refreshing mix of personal and scholarly viewpoints will inspire all who care about the Southwest. It demonstrates that writers who love the Southwest should have as much of a voice in its fate as do planners and politicians.