Gary Wilson was born and reared in small-town Kansas. He has a BA in English from McPherson College (KS), an MA in English Literature from Wichita State University (Kansas) and an MFA in Creative Writing (Fiction) from Bowling Green State University (Ohio). He has taught English literature, composition and creative writing at various universities, a Baltimore City middle school and at a Junior Secondary school for the U.S. Peace Corps in Swaziland, Africa (1968-1970). He has been writing professionally since the early 1970s, and has published dozens of short stories in Glimmer Train, Witness, Kansas Quarterly, William and Mary Review, Orchid, Quarterly West and numerous other literary magazines across the U.S. He has also had stories anthologized in Anyone Is Possible, Street Songs and W.W. Norton's Flash Fiction Forward. This is his first published novel. Wilson currently lives in Chicago, where he teaches fiction writing at the University of Chicago Graham School of General Studies. He is married and has two sons.