This novel would not exist in your hands without the enthusiasm and wise counsel of Andrea Morrison at Writers House. I am deeply thankful for her support and wizardry. An equally boundless gratitude to Laura Perciasepe at Riverhead, whose passion for this book has made it better, sentence by sentence, than I could have imagined. I don’t like to wonder what my life would look like without these two women.
So much is owed to the fellowships, residencies, and academic programs that have supported my writing over the years, including Wesleyan University and the Winchester Fellowship, everyone at the University of Virginia, the creative writing department at the University of Houston, Inprint Houston and its Alexander Prize and Barthelme Prize, the Sewanee Writers’ Conference, the Oregon Literary Fellowship, the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, Pam Houston’s Writing By Writers and the Mill House Residency, and the incredible magic of the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown. I am so very grateful to the National Endowment for the Arts for employing me and teaching me that art is also life.
Nothing happens without teachers. Much gratitude to those who guided me, on and off the page: Alexander Chee, Christopher Tilghman, Deborah Eisenberg, Antonya Nelson, Alexander Parsons, J. Kastely, Mat Johnson, Chitra Divakaruni, Sydney Blair, Jeb Livingood, Tom Drury, and Anne Greene.
Writing itself is a solitary act, but gathering the courage and spark to sit down and do it is a community effort. I am lucky to have found a community of artists, including those saint-status friends who read drafts of this novel, and anyone who ever let me talk about these characters over wine for too long: Michelle Mariano, Jessica Wilbanks, Jacob Reimer, Nathan Graham, David Engelberg, Remi Spector, John Voekel, Kirsten Dahl, Patrick McGinty, Adam Peterson, Austin Tremblay, Danny Wallace, Ashley Wurzbacher, Dickson Lam, Thea Lim, Rebecca Wadlinger, Jesse Donaldson, Matt Sailor, Meagan Morrow, Keya Mitra, Claire Anderson, Erin Mushalla, Hannah Walsh, Katie Bellas, Joshua Rivkin, Erin Beeghly, Katie McBride, Kate Axelrod, Rebecca Calavan, Heather Ryder, Darcie Burrell, Claire Wyckoff, Maggie Shipstead, and Celeste Ng.
I am grateful to champions behind the scenes, including the inimitable Jynne Dilling Martin, as well as Becky Saletan, Geoffrey Kloske, and Geri Thoma.
Thank you to my family, especially Mom and Dad for putting a violin in my hands before I could speak full sentences, for driving me from rehearsal to rehearsal, even when I traded up to the more awkwardly sized cello, and for never letting me think that an artist’s life was anything but achievable and meaningful.
Thank you to my music family, without whom my world is silent: Cassidy English, Stefon Shelton, Ivy Zenobi, Brent Kuhn, Elia Van Lith, Linda Ghidossi-DeLuca, and Cory Antipa, and the music program at the Santa Rosa Symphony.
When I was a teenager, I played in a chamber music seminar led by the St. Lawrence String Quartet, which is where the idea for this novel first took hold. Their mastery, authenticity, and passion taught me that four serious musicians could make something bigger and bolder than themselves. I am grateful they exist and let me witness that mystery.
I’m also so thankful to every underfunded classical and chamber music series (and their student rush prices) in Santa Rosa, California, San Francisco, New York City, Washington, D.C., Houston, and Portland, Oregon.
It is a fact that I would be a lesser woman and writer without the countless e-mails from and fierce friendship of Myung Joh Wesner, Sierra Bellows, and Erin Saldin. The fortitude, lyric, and grace of these three women have propped me up over the years. This is for them.