Joan Silber is the author of six books of fiction, including The Size of the World, finalist for the Los Angeles Times Fiction Prize, Ideas of Heaven, finalist for the National Book Award and the Story Prize, and Household Words, winner of the PEN Hemingway Award. Fools, a new book of linked stories, will be published in 2013. She lives in New York City and teaches at Sarah Lawrence College. (updated 4/2012)