Anthony Varallo is the author of a novel, The Lines, as well as four previous short story collections: This Day in History, winner of the John Simmons Short Fiction Award; Out Loud, winner of the Drue Heinz Literature Prize; Think of Me and I’ll Know; and Everyone Was There, winner of the Elixir Press Fiction Prize. He is a professor of English at the College of Charleston, where he teaches in the MFA Program in Creative Writing.

The stories in this book are like hard little perfect gems. Except when there’re like nice firm chewy gummy candies with something extra inside. Or maybe like zingy spritzery shots of something to drink. Or brain zaps. Or like when your doctor taps your knee just right and you don’t know how they did it. Which I guess means just that this excitingly original work rewards a reader intellectually and emotionally and stylistically, and with humor and pity and sadness all at once. It’s a book I will recommend to my smart reader friends." - Rebecca Brown, judge and author of The Gifts of the Body and You Tell the Stories You Need to Believe