Kevin Brockmeier is the author of three novels, The Brief History of the Dead, The Truth about Celia, and The Illumination (2011), as well as two story collections, Things That Fall from the Sky and The View from the Seventh Layer. His stories have appeared in Best American Short Stories and an anthology of O. Henry Prize Stories, a prize he has received three times. Brockmeier has taught at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, where he received his MFA, and lives in Little Rock, Arkansas.