Acknowledgments

I would like to acknowledge my editor, Patrik Henry Bass, and my agent, Ayesha Pande, for their advocacy and support of this work. Fellowships from Writers in the Woods, MacDowell, Sewanee Writers’ Conference, Vermont Studio Center, and Art Omi facilitated its completion. I would also like to recognize Marta Savigliano and Christopher Waterman for their guidance during the writing of my dissertation about travel to the Chicago World’s Fair of 1893, the research for which ultimately formed the contextual grounding for this novel.

I am grateful to Jami Attenberg, Daryl Chou, Eve Ewing, Maria Hinds, Randall Kenan, Jesse Lee Kercheval, Sarah Lazar, Zachary Lazar, Bernice McFadden, and Marc Perry for their insights during the writing of this book. More broadly, I offer my gratitude to the Black Lives Matter movement, the emergence of which was, among other things, an important reminder of how deeply the answers we come up with are shaped by the questions we are asked.

Thank you to my mother Jacqueline Hubbard, my uncles Charles, James and Peter, my aunts Jackie and Sandee, my father Grigsby, my sister Sage and my brother Haven for being family. Thank you to Allison Warner and Loren Hamilton for being family too.

I am as always indebted to Barbara Christian and Toni Morrison, whose examples remain an abiding source of inspiration and strength. And thank you to Christopher Dunn, Isa Yasmin Gonzalez, Joaquin Hubbard Dunn, and Zé Hubbard Dunn for your love, patience, and solidarity.