David James Poissant is the author of The Heaven of Animals: Stories, longlisted for the PEN / Robert W. Bingham Prize, winner of the GLCA New Writers Award and a Florida Book Award, and a finalist for the L.A. Times Book Prize. Poissant’s stories and essays have appeared in The Atlantic Monthly, The New York Times, One Story, Playboy, and Ploughshares. He teaches in the MFA program at the University of Central Florida. Visit him online at davidjamespoissant.com.