Timothy Parrish is a writer and critic affiliated with the Comparative Literature Department at the University of California, Davis and the English Department at Virginia Tech. He has published three books, most recently Ralph Ellison and the Genius of America.  He is also the editor of The Cambridge Companion to American Novelists. His short story, “Phillip Roth’s Final Hours,” published in Raritan, was nominated for a Pushcart Prize. He is currently completing a novel, Rock Saints, along with a creative nonfiction account of Bob Dylan’s religious transformations.