Jesse Ball is the author of four previous novels, including Silence Once Begun and Samedi the Deafness, and several works of verse, bestiaries, and sketchbooks. He received an NEA creative writing fellowship for 2014, and his prizes include the 2008 Paris Review Plimpton Prize; his verse has been included in the Best American Poetry series. He gives classes on lucid dreaming, walking, and lying at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.