“Allison Amend is a gifted storyteller, whose view of contemporary life is often wonderfully acute, original, and surprising.”—Alison Lurie, author of Foreign Affairs: a Novel Allison Amend’s writing is both thoughtful and entertaining, with a strong sense of humor throughout. Allison Amend was born in Chicago, Illinois, on a day when the Cubs beat the Mets 2–0. She holds an MFA from the University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop. While there, she learned never to live downwind from a pig farm and how to put English on a cue ball. She lives in New York, writing and teaching fiction.