Life Is Short ? Art Is Shorter: In Praise of Brevity - Paperback

David Shields is the author of fifteen books, including Salinger; How Literature Saved My Life, published by Knopf; Reality Hunger, named one of the best books of the year by more than thirty publications; The Thing About Life Is That One Day You'll Be Dead, a New York Times bestseller; Black Planet, a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award; and Remote, winner of the PEN/Revson Award. The recipient of a Guggenheim fellowship and two NEA fellowships, Shields has published essays and stories in dozens of publications, including the New York Times Magazine, Harper's, Esquire, Yale Review, Village Voice, Salon, Slate, McSweeney's, and The Believer. His work has been translated into fifteen languages. He lives with his wife and daughter in Seattle, where he is the Milliman Distinguished Writer-in-Residence at the University of Washington.

Elizabeth Cooperman's work has appeared in the Writer's Chronicle, Seattle Review, and 1913: A Journal of Forms. She earned her MFA in poetry from the University of Washington in 2010, lives in Seattle, and works for Poetry Northwest and a ninety-year-old blind man.