A native of eastern Kentucky, I was fortunate to spend most of my childhood there, surrounded by family. Later I worked as a checker for The New Yorker and did a dissertation on Proust for the University of Chicago. I also taught briefly at Morehead State University in Kentucky and at Tennessee Technological University as an English instructor (adjunct at TTU), but mostly I worked in publishing, as a manuscript editor at the University of Chicago Books Press and as a literature editor at Encyclopedia Britannica. Back in the nineties, I did book reviews, mainly for The Mountain Eagle (Whitesburg, KY) but also for the Columbus (OH) Dispatch, as well as one on Chris Offutt for the Times.