Frederick Barthelme studied fiction with John Barth at the Johns Hopkins Writing Seminars, from which he received his Master of Arts degree. From 1977 to 2010 he taught fiction writing and directed the Center for Writers at the University of Southern Mississippi. He won numerous awards including individual grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, and diverse grants and awards as editor of Mississippi Review and Mississippi Review Online, which he founded and edited. He is the author of sixteen books of fiction and nonfiction and has been published in GQ, Fiction, Kansas Quarterly, Epoch, Ploughshares, Playboy, Esquire, TriQuarterly, North American Review, The New York Times, Frank Magazine, The Southern Review, the Boston Globe Magazine, and elsewhere. His work has been translated into nine languages. His memoir, Double Down: Reflections on Gambling and Loss, co-authored with his brother Steven, was a New York Times Notable Book of the Year. The same honor was awarded to his collection, The Law of Averages. His novel Elroy Nights was also a New York Times Notable Book of the Year and was a 2004 PEN/Faulkner Award finalist. In 2010 he won the Mississippi Institute of Arts and Letters Award for Fiction and is presently editor and publisher of the online literary publication New World Writing (previously Blip Magazine).