Ron Carlson is the author of four novels, Betrayed by F. Scott Fitzgerald (1977), Truants (1981), The Speed of Light (2003), and Five Skies, forthcoming from Viking in May 2007. He has four collections of short stories, News of the World (1988), Plan B for the Middle Class (1992), The Hotel Eden (1997), and At the Jim Bridger (2002), as well as A Kind of Flying (2003), which puts in one volume many of his signature stories from the first three collections. Plan B for the Middle Class was selected by The New York Times as one of the Best Books of the Year, and The Hotel Eden was selected as a Notable Book of the year. His next collection, At the Jim Bridger, was regarded as one of the best books of the year by The Los Angeles Times. In 1986, Carlson joined the faculty of Arizona State University, and soon went on to chair its M.F.A. program in creative writing. In 2002, he was awarded the university's highest honor, the rank of Regents Professor. This fall Carlson will be leaving Arizona State to take a position at the University of California at Irvine as director of its writing program in fiction.