Collected Stories” confronts the prominent short-story writer Ruth Steiner with her student turned confidante turned competitor Lisa Morrison. What is new here is that the women are teacher and student both in academia and in life. Lisa has also cannibalized Ruth's experience, to wit her youthful, shattering affair with the poet Delmore Schwartz. As always, Margulies is literate, intellectually stimulating, and able to create characters of both dramatic and human interest. Here two worlds clash in age-old, ecumenical dueling, led up to by great mutual emotional investment, and all the more bitter for it.