With thanks first and foremost to my mentor and colleague Grant Tracey for allowing me the opportunity to coedit this text and to editor Jeremy Schraffenberger for his many forms of support in bringing this project to light.
Thanks to the Department of Languages & Literatures; College of Humanities, Arts & Sciences; and the Office of the Provost and Executive Vice President for Academic Affairs at the University of Northern Iowa for their support of this project and NAR Press.
Thank you to our talented editorial staff of the North American Review for their invaluable help, including Jayda Baumhover, Amanda Husak, Kenna Krier, Krystal Meester, Kristy Reth, Julia Schmidt, Brooke Wiese, Chelsea Winterton, and graduate assistant Jen Corrigan.
Many thanks to Abby Gardyasz and Zack Goodall for their time working on the layout.
Special thanks, as well, to Sarah Pauls for her dynamic cover design, Hannah Carr-Murphy for text design and grammatical inquiries, and Michael Jackson for proofreading/copyediting.
Finally, thank you to the Chicago Manual of Stylefor its unwaivering governance in my times of great editorial need.
—Shelly Criswell
Thanks to Shelly Criswell for being the brains and organization behind our partnership. And for being a great editor. Wonderful work done on several of the pieces. She helped me immensely with the transitions and through-line to my article.
Special thanks to J. D. Schraffenberger for suggesting this project. He’s a true inspiration. The hardest working man at UNI.
Thank you to our Department Head, Julie Husband for giving us the work environment to get this anthology done.
A big shout-out to Steven Schwartz. He was super-enthusiastic about the anthology and suggested I contact Robin Black and Robert Boswell for contributions. And what contributions!
We couldn’t have done this without these hard-working folks at NAR: Jayda Baumhover, Amanda Husak, Kenna Krier, Krystal Meester, Kristy Reth, Julia Schmidt, Brooke Wiese, Chelsea Winterton, and graduate assistant Jen Corrigan.
Many more thanks to Abby Gardyasz and Zack Goodall for their time working out the initial kinks of our layout.
And three big shout-outs to Sarah Pauls for the book’s graphic design; Hannah Carr-Murphy for textual design; and Michael Jackson for his eagle proofreading, copyediting eyes. You three truly rock and can be a part of any rock band I’m a part of.
Finally, I’d like to thank all of our contributors for offering such fine work, work that I look forward to sharing with my creative writing students in future workshops. And, I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention Pro-Mark sticks and Ludwig drums for keeping me sane while I bashed and battered away any frustrations that editing any project can bring.
—Grant Tracey