David Guterson was born in Seattle in 1956. He is the author of a collection of short stories, The Country Ahead of Us, The Country Behind, and of three novels, Snow Falling on Cedars, East of the Mountains, and Our Lady of the Forest. A Guggenheim Fellow and former contributing editor to Harper’s, Guterson won the PEN Faulker Award for fiction in 1995. In 2002 he cofounded Field’s End, a nonprofit organization designed to serve writers. “Criticism,” “On His Twenty-third,” and “Quiddity” are Guterson’s first published poems. His new novel will be published in 2008.