The author of the novel, The Australia Stories and the story collection, Newsworld, which won the Drue Heinz Literature Prize and was a finalist for the John Gardner Book Award and the Paterson Prize. His work has been published in Fiction, The Georgia Review, Harvard Review, The Gettysburg Review, Indiana Review, The Iowa Review, The Missouri Review, North American Review, Shenandoah, The Sun, Virginia Quarterly Review, and Willow Springs. He lives in a little town called Orcutt (just north of Santa Barbara, California) and co-directs the Creative Writing program at Cal Poly University. Aside from his work in creative writing, over the past decade, he has interviewed over 100 men and women who worked in animation and outdoor amusements during the 1930s, 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s.