John Brandon has published four previous books with McSweeney's--the novels Arkansas, Citrus County, and A Million Heavens, and the story collection Further Joy. Arkansas was adapted into a movie of the same name starring Liam Hemsworth, Vince Vaughn, and John Malkovich. Citrus County was a finalist for the New York Public Library Young Lions Award and was reviewed on the cover of the New York Times Book Review.

Brandon has been awarded the Grisham Fellowship at Ole Miss and the Tickner Fellowship at Gilman School in Baltimore, and he has received a Sustainable Arts Foundation Fellowship. His short fiction has appeared in ESPN the Magazine, Oxford American, McSweeney's Quarterly Concern, Mississippi Review, Subtropics, Chattahoochee Review, Hotel Amerika, and other publications, and he has written about college football for GQ.com and Grantland. He was born in Florida and now resides in Minnesota, where he teaches at Hamline University in St. Paul.