SCOTT BLACKWOOD grew up in Texas. His award-winning collection of stories, In the Shadow of Our House, was published by SMU Press in 2001. His fiction has appeared in The Gettysburg Review, Boston Review, and Southwest Review, and the title story from his collection is featured on the New York Times Book Review’s "First Chapters" website. Blackwood has won a Dobie Paisano Fellowship, two Texas Commission on the Arts Fellowships, and twice been nominated for the Pushcart Prize. He is an Assistant Professor of English and Director of the MFA Creative Writing Program at Roosevelt University in Chicago.