Fond greetings to my California friends, Laurel Ladevich, Karen Serlin, and Fran Koenig, who help me get the details right and make me want to move back there. Thanks to Jim Tushinski, who has been on this writing journey with me for a long time now, and to Glen Worthey for his research skills, patience, and encouragement.

Above all this is a book for poets and fellow writers, the great and the small, the just starting out and the much acclaimed. Comrades in the struggle, wooers and sometimes stalkers of the muse: we are hopeful and despairing, ridiculous and sublime, often within the course of a single day. Let us continue.

Also by Louis Bayard

Also by Jean Thompson

Novels

My Wisdom

The Woman Driver

Wide Blue Yonder

City Boy

The Year We Left Home

The Humanity Project

She Poured Out Her Heart

A Cloud in the Shape of a Girl

Short Stories

The Gasoline Wars

Little Face and Other Stories

Who Do You Love

Throw Like a Girl

Do Not Deny Me

The Witch: and Other Tales Re-told

About the Author

Jean Thompson is the author of fourteen books of fiction, including the National Book Award finalist Who Do You Love, the NYT bestseller The Year We Left Home, and the NYT Notable Book Wide Blue Yonder. Her work has been published in the New Yorker, as well as dozens of other magazines, and anthologized in The Best American Short Stories and the Pushcart Prize. She has been the recipient of Guggenheim and National Endowment for the Arts fellowships, among other accolades, and has taught creative writing at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, Reed College, Northwestern University, and many other colleges and universities.