Understories

Acknowledgments

Givens: that there are too many to thank, that thanks are never quite adequate, that their ink allotment here can only hint at the true scope and scale of my gratitude.

Thanks to Steve Mounkhall for being the ideal reader, the extra lobe of my brain, a presence even when we have not spoken for stretches.

Thanks to Michele Filgate for reminding me that reading is, indeed, a variety of breathing, and for sharing so many inhalations and exhalations with me.

Thanks to the Seacoast Writers Circle, and most especially its core members — Donna Kirk, Josiah Eikelboom, W.B. Berman, Jim Kozubek, Tamara Collins, and Tammi Truax, who kept my nose within a spark’s breadth from the grindstone for years. And for sharing your brains, your words, and your laughter, and your Sunday evenings.

Thanks to David Fisher and Ross Kaplan for your unwavering support and continuous advice over the years.

Thanks to my stellar colleagues at Chester College of New England, Monica Bilson, Mark Sleiter, Eric Pinder, Chris Anderson, and Jenn Monroe — what fortune to be part of this amazing, sui generis department.

Thanks to writer and artist friends: Rebecca Makkai, Greg Gerke, Gabriel Blackwell, Matt Bell, Alison Lobron, Joshua Cohen, Kate Christensen, Brian Boyd, Steve Himmer, John Madera, Anna Wexler, Steve Almond, Lance Olsen, Krista Knight, Jacki Lyden, Beth Ann Miller, Chris Sumner, Judd Ehrlich, Alice Andrews, Becca Derry, and Mildred Crow; you have offered crucial support, conversation, and solace, and led by the example of your own pens and brushes.

Thanks to mentors Alex Parsons, Bud Pollak, Morrow Jones, Charlotte Bacon, and David Huddle, who shaped my literary sensibility, but something far larger — a way of being in the world, a way of becoming, still ongoing. I strive daily to emulate your passion, humor, wisdom and work ethics.

To my UNH brethren, Jason Ronstadt, Joel Rice, Mohan Ravichandran, Dylan Walsh, Kate Megear, Nate Graziano, and Debbie Upton Harrison, there at the dawn of what has become a new life for me.

Thanks to Tom Lee for letting me gallivant in the woods in Forest Communities of New Hampshire, the first and most primordial of the understories.

Thanks to Bob Simmons, projectionist, for letting me climb up into the booth.

Thanks to marvelous editors: Melvin Sterne, Scott Garson, Bill Henderson, Mark Mirsky, Paulette Licitra, Ander Monson and Sarah Blackman, Kevin McIlvoy and Nick Voges, Carol Novak, Rachel Kendall, Phuong Pham, Derek White, Steven Church and crew at The Normal School.

Thanks to David McNamara, for bringing Circulation into the world and providing it with maps so it could roam.

Thanks to Bradford Morrow, who, through Conjunctions, did so much before we ever met to shape the writer I would later become, and whose friendship I count invaluable.

Thanks to the Corporation of Yaddo for the sanctuary of time and the enduring friendships that you afforded me.

To all the wonderful people at Bellevue Literary Press, and most of all for Erika Goldman, my editor, a special declaration of gratitude, for finding me and for perceiving in these stories a unified sensibility and shape.

Thanks to my brother Greg for sharing your love of language, literature, and ideas with me over the years, and for being such an astute early reader of so many of these stories.

To my mom and dad — to thank you feels like thanking myself, so thoroughly do your visions and personalities suffuse these stories. I am grateful, too, that you surrounded me with books and an ever-replenishing thirst for getting to know the world.

Finally, most of all to Mary Ann and Ella. Words are least sufficient here, given how many joyous roles you play in my life, how much and indelible a part of me you are. Not only do I love you, I relish being able to share with you the adventure of our lives.