Howard Norman is a two-time finalist for the National book award—for _The Northern Lights _and The Bird Artist—and author of, most recently, The Haunting of L (Farrar, Straus & Giroux) and The Chauffuer: Stories (Picador, 2002). He is associate professor of creative writing at the University of Maryland at College Park and is Writer in Residence at the Kratz Center for Creative Writing at Goucher College this spring. (updated 2003)