I was a big and un-ironic fan of Dear Abby when I was a kid in Chicago. I think I sort of internalized her. So I have this inner Abby: cranky, proper, folksy yet scathing, with a beehive hairdo. But that's my issue.

His first story collection CivilWarLand in Bad Decline was a finalist for the 1996 PEN/Hemingway Award. A professor at Syracuse University Saunders won the National Magazine Award for fiction in 1994 1996 2000 and 2004 and second prize in the O.