Fiction, like life, has its lessons, and it's a wild ride on the learning curve when storytelling goes to school. The short stories in this collection negotiate the heights, the depths, and the unexpected angles of campus intrigue, sexual and intellectual awakenings and reckonings, and all the heartache and hilarity of a sentimental education. The work of such well-known authors as Stephen King, Marly Swick, and Ron Carlson appears here as well as stories by most promising new voices. The results are sometimes harrowing (in King's story, a serial killer roams a campus), sometimes droll (in Lucia Perillo's "The Wife of an Indian," an academic adjusts his ethnicity to get tenure), and often poignant (as in Dan Chaon's story of the aftermath of an accident that injures a fraternity president.)
John McNally is the author of three novels, After the Workshop, America's Report Card, and The Book of Ralph; and two story collections, Ghosts of Chicago and Troublemakers. He has edited six anthologies, including Who Can Save Us Now: Brand-New Superheroes and Their Amazing (Short) Stories (co-edited with Owen King). John's short stories, essays, and reviews have appeared in over ninety magazines, newspapers, and anthologies, including Virginia Quarterly Review, Washington Post, The Sun, Open City, Chicago Tribune, New Sudden Fiction (Norton), and Long Story Short (University of North Carolina Press). His work has appeared in the textbooks Winding Roads: Exercises in Writing Creative Nonfiction and Behind the Short Story: From First Draft to Final Draft, both published by Longman. John has been the recipient of numerous awards for his writing, including a Chesterfield Writer's Film Project for screenwriting (sponsored by Paramount Pictures), the Jenny McKean Moore fellowship for fiction (sponsored by George Washington University), and the Carl Djerassi fellowship from the Wisconsin Institute for Creative Writing at the University of Wisconsin. His short stories have been cited three times as an outstanding story of the year in the Best American Short Stories series (1991, 2007, and 2008). John has taught creative writing at Southern Illinois University at Carbondale, Western State College of Colorado, University of Nebraska-Lincoln, University of Wisconsin-Madison, University of South Florida at Tampa, George Washington University, and Columbia College Chicago. He has given over a hundred readings all across the country, from New York City to Honolulu, from Bellingham, Washington, to Sanibel Island, Florida. A native of Chicago's southwest side, he is at present an associate professor of English at Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, where he lives with his wife, Amy, and their many animals.
