Susan Straight has published eight novels, including Highwire Moon, finalist for the National Book Award in 2001, and Between Heaven and Here. Her short stories have appeared in Zoetrope, the Ontario Review, the Oxford American, the Sun, Black Clock and many others. Her essays have appeared in the New York Times, Reader’s Digest, Family Circle, Salon, the Los Angeles Times, Harpers, the Nation and elsewhere. Her memoir In the Country of Women is forthcoming from Catapult. ‘The Perseids’ is part of a new novel, Mecca. She lives in Riverside, California, where she was born.