David Means is the author of seven short story collections, including Assorted Fire Events (2000), which won the Los Angeles Times Book Prize and was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award; The Secret Goldfish, which was a finalist for the Frank O’Connor International Short Story Prize; The Spot (2010), which was a New York Times Notable Book; and, most recently, Two Nurses Smoking (2022). His novel, Hystopia (2016), was nominated for the Mann Booker Prize. His stories appear frequently in The New Yorker, Harper’s, Granta, The Paris Review, and Zoetrope; he has been the recipient of three O. Henry Prizes, three Pushcart Prizes; and his work has been selected for The Best American Short Stories, The Best American Mystery Stories, and The O. Henry Prize Stories. His non-fiction has appeared in Harper’s and The New York Times; and his first non-fiction book, Pivot: Ruminations in the Shadow of Death, is forthcoming from Farrar, Straus and Giroux. The recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2013, he is a professor at Vassar College.