Michael Kardos is the author of the novels Bluff, Before He Finds Her, and The Three-Day Affair, an Esquire best book of the year, as well as the story collection One Last Good Time, which won the Mississippi Institute of Arts & Letters Award for fiction, and the textbook The Art and Craft of Fiction: A Writer’s Guide. His short stories have appeared in One Story, The Southern Review, Crazyhorse, and many other magazines and anthologies, and have won two Pushcart Prizes. Michael grew up on the Jersey Shore, received a degree in music from Princeton University, and played the drums professionally for a number of years. He has an M.F.A. in fiction from The Ohio State University and a Ph.D. from the University of Missouri. He currently co-directs the creative writing program at Mississippi State University, where he received the Grisham Master Teacher award, the university's highest teaching honor.