Kevin Brockmeier is the author of the novels The Illumination, The Brief History of the Dead, and The Truth About Celia. His work has been translated into seventeen languages, and he has published his stories in such venues as The New Yorker, McSweeney’s, Zoetrope, Tin House, The Oxford American, The Georgia Review, and The Best American Short Stories. He has received the Borders Original Voices Award, three O. Henry Awards (one, a first prize), the PEN USA Award, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and an NEA Grant. Recently he was named one of Granta magazine’s Best Young American Novelists. He lives in Little Rock, Arkansas, where he was raised.