Ron Carlson is the author of eight books of fiction, most recently his selected stories, A Kind of Flying (2003), the novel The Speed of Light (2003), and the story collection At the Jim Bridger (2003). His short stories have appeared in esquire, Harper’s, The New Yorker, Gentlemen’s Quarterly, Epoch, The North American Review, and other journals, as well as The Best American Short Stories, The O’Henry Prize series, The Pushcart Prize anthology, The Norton Anthology of Short Fiction, and dozens of other anthologies. He is foundation professor and regents’ professor of English at Arizona State University. Among his awards area National Endowment of the Arts fellowship in fiction, the Cohen Prize at Ploughshares, and a National Society of Arts and Letters Literature Award.