What does it mean to be a westerner? With all the mythology that has grown up about the American West, is it even possible to describe how it was, how it is, here, in the West--just that, in the words of Lynn Stegner? Starting with that challenge, Stegner and Russell Rowland invited several dozen members of the western literary tribe to write about living in the West and being a western writer in particular. West of 98 gathers sixty-six literary testimonies, in essays and poetry, from a stellar collection of writers who represent every state west of the 98th parallel--a kind of Greek chorus of the most prominent voices in western literature today, who seek to characterize the West as each of us grew to know it, and, equally important, the West that is still becoming.