ERIC PUCHNER is the author of the story collection Music Through the Floor, a finalist for the New York Public Library’s Young Lions Fiction Award; the novel Model Home, which was a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award and won a California Book Award; and a second short-story collection, Last Day on Earth. His short stories and personal essays have appeared in GQ, Granta, Tin House, The Best American Short Stories, and many other places. He has received an Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He is an associate professor in the Writing Seminars at Johns Hopkins University and lives in Baltimore with his wife, the novelist Katharine Noel, and their two children.