Edward McPherson is the author of The History of the Future (Coffee House Press), Buster Keaton: Tempest in a Flat Hat(Faber and Faber), and The Backwash Squeeze and Other Improbable Feats: A Newcomer's Journey into the World of Bridge (HarperCollins). He has written for The New York Times Magazine, The Paris Review, Tin House, and The American Scholar, among others. He has received a Pushcart Prize, the Gulf Coast Prize in Fiction, a Minnesota State Arts Board grant, and the Gesell Award from the University of Minnesota, where he received his MFA. He teaches creative writing at Washington University in St. Louis.