Many of the stories in here were begun—and a couple or three of them finished—while I attended the Syracuse University MFA Program in Creative Writing. My time there was invaluable to me, and to this collection. It was also inexpressibly joyful. Thank you, teachers: George Saunders, Arthur Flowers, Mary Karr, Mary Gaitskill, Christopher Kennedy, Mary Caponegro, and Brooks Haxton. And thank you, early readers, workshopmates, and alumni pallies: Christian TeBordo, Salvador Plascencia, Eric Rosenblum, Phil LaMarche, Thomas Yagoda, Erin Brooks Worley, Keith Gessen, Ellen Litman, Laura Farmer, Miciah Bay Gault, Stephanie Carpenter, Rebecca Curtis, Adam Desnoyers, Jeff Parker, Nina Shope, Christian Moody, Sarah Harwell, Courtney Queeney, Chris Narozny, Christopher Boucher, and Daniel Torday.
Thank you, Eli Horowitz, for always showing me—or at least trying to show me—what I’ve been failing to see. This book is better than it was before you read it.
Thank you, Adam Krefman, Juliet Litman, Michelle Quint, and the rest of the McSweeney’ses for all the energy you’ve put into making this and the last one happen.
Thank you to the editors of those publications in which stories from this book originally appeared: Jodee Stanley, Jordan Bass, Rob Spillman, Danit Brown, Elizabeth Hodges, and Michael Archer.
Thank you, Adam Novy and Sid Feldman, for not telling me to go away when I was young and annoying(er) and didn’t know what to read.
Thank you, family, Atara and Lanny and Paula and Rachel Levin, for way too much to even pretend to begin to name—for all those things that make you the second-hardest people in the world for me to properly thank.
Thank you, Leslie Lockett, Leslie Lockett, Leslie Lockett, Leslie Lockett, Leslie Lockett, Leslie Lockett, Leslie Lockett.