Ten women writing fiction in America today-Toni Cade Bambara, Joan Didion, Louise Erdrich, Gail Godwin, Mary Gordon, Alison Lurie, Joyce Carol Oates, Jayne Anne Philips, Susan Fromberg Schaeffer, and Mary Lee Settle-represent that geographic, ethnic, and racial diversity that is American. Their differing perspectives on literature and the American experience have produced Erdrich's stolid North Dakota plainswomen; Didion's sun-baked dreamers and screamers; the "urban ethnics"-Irish, Jewish, and