Fort Wayne native Michael Martone is director of the Creative Writing Program at the University of Alabama and author of five books of short fiction, including Seeing Eye (Zoland Books, 1995), Pensées: The Thoughts of Dan Quayle (Broad Ripple Press, 1994), Fort Wayne Is Seventh on Hitler’s List (Indiana University Press, 1990), Safety Patrol (The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1988) and Alive and Dead in Indiana (Alfred A. Knopf, 1984). He has edited two collections of essays about the Midwest for University of Iowa Press: A Place of Sense: Essays in Search of the Midwest (1988) and Townships: Pieces of the Midwest (1992). His own collection of essays about the Midwest, titled The Flatness and Other Landscapes (University of Georgia Press, 2000), won the AWP Prize for Creative Nonfiction in 1998.