Delicate Edible Birds: And Other Stories

Acknowledgments

I OWE MY GRATITUDE TO MANY PEOPLE AND ORGANIZATIONS, chief among them:

Everyone at Hyperion and Voice, especially my editor, Barbara Jones, who dove in like a champion and made this collection (wildly) better, Ellen Archer, Sarah Landis, and Allison McGeehon, all of whom believed; and Pam Dorman, at Viking now, but not forgotten.

The faculty and my fellow students of the MFA program at the University of Wisconsin, where half of these stories were written, especially Lorrie Moore, Jesse Lee Kercheval, Judith Claire Mitchell, and Ron Kuka.

The editors who selected some of these stories for their journals and anthologies: C. Michael Curtis, Heidi Pitlor, Stephen King, Natalie Danford, Richard Bausch, Susan Burmeister-Brown, Linda Swanson-Davies, Don Lee, and Bill Henderson.

The Corporation of Yaddo; the Vermont Studio Center; and Anne Axton and the University of Louisville’s Creative Writing Department for the Axton Fellowship.

My agent, Bill Clegg, an honest and true friend of my work.

My brilliant posse of readers: Steph Bedford, Kevin A. González, and Sarah Groff.

My family and beloved (though neglected) friends.

The brave and beautiful women whose stories inspired this collection.

And, mostly, to Clay, my first reader, who was there at the birth of each of these stories and whose constant love made them come alive.