Ron Carlson is the author of eight books of fiction, most recently his selected stories A Kind of Flying (Norton), the novel The Speed of Light (HarperCollins), and the story collection At the Jim Bridger (Picador), all published in 2003. His other works include the story collections The Hotel Eden (1997), Plan B for the Middle Class (1992), and The News of the World (1987), and the novels Truants (1981) and Betrayed by F. Scott Fitzgerald (1977), all from Norton. His fiction has appeared in Harper's, Gentlemen's Quarterly, Esquire, Story, and dozens of other journals and anthologies, including The Norton Anthology of Short Fiction, The Best American Short Stories, and Sudden Fiction. Carlson has been awarded a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship in Fiction and the 1993 Ploughshares Cohen Award. A frequent contributor to The New York Times Book Review and The Los Angeles Times Book Review, he also hosts "Books and Company" on KAET Public Television in Arizona. He is Regents' Professor of English at Arizona State University and lives in Scottsdale, Arizona.