PETER ORNER is the author of two novels and three short story collections. His previous collection of essays, Am I Alone Here?: Notes on Living to Read and Reading to Live, was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award for Criticism. A four-time recipient of the Pushcart Prize, Orner has been published in The Best American Short Stories, The New York Times, The New Yorker, The Atlantic, The Paris Review, Granta, and McSweeney’s, and his work has been translated into eight languages. He has been awarded the Rome Prize from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, a Guggenheim Fellowship, a two-year Lannan Foundation Literary Fellowship, as well as a Fulbright in Namibia. He is the Chair of the English and Creative Writing Department at Dartmouth College and lives with his family in Norwich, Vermont.