Mickey Hess is assistant professor of English at Rider University and the author of Big Wheel at the Cracker Factory, which was featured as “Critic’s Choice” in The Chicago Reader, described as “thoroughly humorous” by The Cleveland Plain-Dealer, and mentioned online at The New Yorker, Poets & Writers, and USA Today. Mickey’s stories and essays have been published in Created in Darkness by Troubled Americans: Best of McSweeney’s Humor Category and such journals as McSweeney’s, Ninth Letter, Punk Planet, Fourteen Hills, Pear Noir, Opium Magazine, and Foundling Review. He is also the author of three books on hip-hop music and culture.