Thank you to all of the intrepid civilians who read these stories in various forms and made them what they are, many of them dear friends I rely on deeply: Jamel Brinkley, Devyn Defoe, Neha Chaudhary-Kamdar, Gothataone Moeng, Sterling HolyWhiteMountain, Georgina Beaty, Nicole Caplain Kelly, Evgeniya Dame, Asiya Gaildon, Jamil Kochai, Adam Johnson, Judith Claire Mitchell, Jesse Lee Kercheval, Ron Kuka, Allie Rowbottom, Sarah McColl, Kimberly King Parsons, Mary South, Jean Garnett, Lydia Fitzpatrick, Marian Palaia, Andrew Mortazavi, Yuko Sakata, Janice Shapiro, Hannah Oberman-Breindel, Olga Zilberbourg, Greg Hunt, Jenn Salcido, Grainger David, Kyle McCarthy, Kai Carlson-Wee, Jacques Rancourt, Josh Kalscheur, Zinzi Clemmons, Leigh Feldman, Michelle Wildgen, Maud Casey, and Lan Samantha Chang, especially, for pushing me toward the light with “Laramie Time.” And thanks to Alexander Lumans for reading the whole manuscript, in different form, some years back.

For late-stage specialized reads and research help (not to mention emphatic and undeserved cheerleading), thank you so much to Adam Schorin, Jessamine Chan, and Matt Wood, three dear friends I am so lucky to have lending their thoughts and attention and support to this process.

Thank you for the time and space and, most importantly, faith in me: Yaddo, Hedgebrook, the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, Djerassi, Lighthouse Works, Millay, Jentel, the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, StoryKnife, the James Merrill House, Brush Creek, the Sitka Center for Art and Ecology, the Vermont Studio Center, Caldera, the Santa Fe Art Institute, and Grace Paley Palooza. And thanks especially to MacDowell, where I started and finished this book, ten years apart. Thank you so much to Diana and Jim Lett, Sarah LaBrie and Justin Lerner, Carmiel Banasky, Raky Sastri and Laurelin Kruse, and Sophia Cosmadopoulos for lending me your lovely homes while I worked on this book.

Thank you for the gift of money and time, without which I certainly would’ve been knocked off this path years ago: the Fulbright Commission, the Rona Jaffe Foundation, the Stegner Fellowship Program, the Elizabeth George Foundation, and Princeton University. Your generosity made this possible.

Thank you so much to my colleagues and students at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, the University of Michigan, Emory University, the Young Writers Workshop, and Stanford University—what an inspiration and privilege to know you.

Thank you to my mentors. I can’t believe I’ve had the fortune to receive the wisdom of such luminaries through the years: Lynda Barry, Lorrie Moore, Elizabeth Tallent, Steven Bogart, Peter Ho Davies, Jane Hamilton, the late Michael Fiveash, Connie Lane, and Anne Sanderson.