Mary Robison has been widely recognized as a major talent among contemporary American short-story writers. Critics have praised her lean prose and her carefully observed glimpses into the everyday lives of ordinary, middle-class Americans. Many of Robison's stories first appeared in the New Yorker; her work has also been included in The Pushcart Prize, VII: Best of the Small Presses (1983); The Best American Short Stories 1982; and the 1987 O. Henry Prize Stories. Among her admirers have been such distinguished writers as John Barth, Richard Yates, and Bobbie Ann Mason. Writing in the Virginia Quarterly Review (Spring 1986), Susan Mernit credits Robison, among a handful of other writers, with reviving the short story as a popular literary art form.

Robison is the daughter of attorney Anthony Cennamo and psychologist F. Elizabeth Waldkoetter Reiss. One of eight children (she has five brothers and two sisters), Robison was born on 14 January 1949 in Washington...