Born and raised in the post-World War II American West, Ron Carlson is a short-story writer known for his self-styled regionalism that allows for characters to suffer through comic, tender, and hard moments of self-examination and realization. Though he has lived on the East Coast, Carlson identifies himself as a Westerner and wishes to be known as such. "The light and space here sustain me," he explained in an unpublished interview: "I couldn't go to New York and type. I wouldn't want to go back to Connecticut. It's beautiful: rolling green hills. But I found it ultimately oppressive and enclosed." Currently a professor at Arizona State University, Carlson has said that the secret to his sympathetic portrayals of human quirks and foibles is his "practice to pay hard, hard attention."

Ronald Frank Carlson was born on 15 September 1947 in Logan, Utah, to Edwin Carlson, an engineer and welder, and...