Jim Dodge is the author of three novels—Fup, Not Fade Away, and Stone Junction—and a collection of poetry and short prose, Rain on the River. He received his Master of Fine Arts in creative writing/poetry from the University of Iowa Writers Workshop in 1969 and has been the director of the creative writing program in the English department at Humboldt State University in Arcata, California, since 1995. He lives on an isolated ranch in western Sonoma County and has worked as an apple picker, a carpet layer, a teacher, a professional gambler, a shepherd, and a woodcutter.