ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Thank you to my professors and fellow students in the fiction workshop at UC Riverside for their early encouragement to pursue this story. Thanks in particular to my mentors, Charmaine Craig and Andrew Winer, whose nurturing care has fundamentally shaped me as a writer and person. I am grateful for expansive literary conversations with friends, especially Kamala Puligandla, Toni Bentley, and William J. Simmons.

I also wish to thank my wise editors, Lauren Hooker and Oona Holahan, and the entire team at Seven Stories. For his intrepid belief in this project, I owe tremendous gratitude to my agent, Jon Curzon. This is a book about living with literature, and I am indebted to the many writers who have provided source material and illuminated my life. Thanks to my parents and post-diagnosis doctors for keeping me alive. I also appreciate the nurses, lab technicians, administrative workers, and others whose labor has made my care possible.

Thanks most of all to Aaron Bornstein for our life, in sickness and in health.