"This is the book I was sending out in 2010, the one that came close at a couple of national book..."

“This is the book I was sending out in 2010, the one that came close at a couple of national book contests. It was more like sixteen stories, 150 pages. I’d also sent this collection to Victoria Barrett at Engine Books, and she, too, offered a pointed criticism that I took to heart. She thought two of the stories didn’t belong with the rest, and so I cut those two stories and added four more. The book was eighteen stories now, still around 150 pages, and the first place I sent it to in 2011 was the Iowa Short Fiction Award.”

- Chad Simpson, author of Tell Everyone I Said Hi