Tony Earley was born & raised in Rutherfordton, North Carolina, & graduated from Warren Wilson College in Asheville, North Carolina. He attended the University of Alabama at Tuscaloosa, where he earned his MFA in creative writing, studied under Richard Yates, & won several fiction prizes. He is the author of the short story collection "Here We Are in Paradise" & he wrote the preface to "New Stories from the South 1999", by Algonquin Books. He lives with his wife & dogs in Nashville, Tennessee, where he is an assistant professor at Vanderbilt University.