Josh Russell was born Thanksgiving Day, 1968, in Carbondale, IL, and raised in Normal, IL. Russell received his MFA from Louisiana State University and taught at LSU while working on his MFA. He now makes his home in Georgia, where he lives with his wife and daughter, and teaches creative writing at Georgia State University in Atlanta. His first novel, Yellow Jack (W.W. Norton, 1999), was shortlisted for the Barnes & Nobel Discover Great Writers Award. His second, My Bright Midnight (LSU Press, 2010), earned him a National Endowment for the Arts Literature Fellowship in Prose. A third novel is forthcoming in 2012 from Dzanc Books. Russell ‘s work has appeared in many anthologies, including New Stories from the South: The Year ‘s Best, French Quarter Fiction, and Not Normal, Illinois, and in numerous literary magazines, most recently Epoch, Black Warrior Review, and Copper Nickel.