Charles D’Ambrosio is from the Pacific Northwest. He has an MFA from Iowa where he currently teaches writing. His short stories have appeared regularly in The New Yorker and other literary journals and have been selected for inclusion in numerous anthologies. His first collection, The Point (1995), was a New York Times Notable Book and finalist for the Pen/Hemingway Award and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize. In 2005, he published a brilliant collection of essays called Orphans. Following the release in 2006 of his second book of short fiction, The Dead Fish Museum, D’Ambrosio received the Whiting Award and the Academy of Arts and Letters Award for Literature, and the collection was a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award.