Jon Hauss, Second Place winner of Narrative’s 2017 Winter Story Contest, grew up in Southern California and earned a PhD from the University of Washington. He has taught at Saint Lawrence University in New York, at Rhode Island College, and as a Fulbright Scholar at Masaryk University in the Czech Republic and is now a professor of American literature and critical theory at California State University, Dominguez Hills. He lives by the sea with his wife, who is also an English professor.