David Shields is the author of fifteen books, including Salinger ; How Literature Saved My Life , published by Knopf; Reality Hunger , named one of the best books of the year by more than thirty publications; The Thing About Life Is That One Day You'll Be Dead , a New York Times bestseller; Black Planet , a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award; and Remote , winner of the PEN/Revson Award. The recipient of a Guggenheim fellowship and two NEA fellowships, Shields has published essays and stories in dozens of publications, including the New York Times Magazine , Harper's , Esquire , Yale Review , Village Voice , Salon , Slate , McSweeney's , and The Believer . His work has been translated into fifteen languages. He lives with his wife and daughter in Seattle, where he is the Milliman Distinguished Writer-in-Residence at the University of Washington. Elizabeth Cooperman's work has appeared in the Writer's Chronicle , Seattle Review , and 1913: A Journal of Forms . She earned her MFA in poetry from the University of Washington in 2010, lives in Seattle, and works for Poetry Northwest and a ninety-year-old blind man.
Life Is Short - Art Is Shorter : In Praise of Brevity