John Keeble is the author of seven previous books, including Yellowfish, Broken Ground, and The Shadows of Owls. He is also author of Out of the Channel, the definitive study of the Exxon Valdez disaster. Keeble was cofounder of the graduate creative writing program at Eastern Washington University where he taught for more than thirty years, and has taught also at Grinnell College and the University of Alabama and served as Distinguished Visiting Writer at Boise State University. With his wife Claire, he lives, in a house of his own construction, on a wooded hillside west of Spokane, Washington.