THESE STORIES FIRST APPEARED, in somewhat different forms, in the following places: “Mr. Voice” Tin House and Best American Short Stories 2015; “Fran’s Friend Has Cancer” Ploughshares; “Magnificent Desolation” The Spokesman-Review and Selected Shorts; “Drafting” Mississippi Review; “The Angel of Rome” (written in collaboration with Edoardo Ballerini) Audible Originals; “Before You Blow” The Spokesman-Review; “Town & Country” Scribd Originals; “Cross the Woods” Esquire; “To the Corner” Harper’s Magazine; “Famous Actor” Tin House, Best American Short Stories 2017, Pushcart Prize Anthology XLI; “Balloons” Washington Square Review; “The Way the World Ends,” Amazon Originals Warmer Series.
Thank you to my wife and first reader, Anne Walter; to my agent, Warren Frazier; my editors, Jennifer Barth and Millicent Bennett; and everyone at HarperCollins, especially Jonathan Burnham, Sarah Ried, Liz Velez, Amy Baker, Jane Beirn, and Chantal Restivo-Alessi, who helped get permission for the cover photo. And to Italian film icons Roberto Russo and Monica Vitti, grazie mille for allowing us to use that wonderful image. Thank you to Katy Sewall, for giving this book such a great read, and to a slew of other writers, friends and editors who, from 2013 to 2021 selected and contributed to these pieces, including Cheston Knapp, Jennifer Haigh, Andrew Milward, Amy Grace Loyd, Heidi Pitlor, T. C. Boyle, Meg Wolitzer, Tyler Cabot, Yael Goldstein Love, David Blum, Julia Sommerfeld, Spencer Gafney and Carolyn Lamberson. Monica Mereghetti and Carlo Maffini were a huge help with the Italian and Latin in “The Angel of Rome,” and a special grazie amico mio to Edoardo Ballerini for helping me bring those characters to life.